Trump's Barbaric Boat Attack

Launching additional strikes to murder the survivors of the first attack is monstrous.

The president’s murderous attack on the Venezuelan boat last week was even worse than previously known. The Intercept reports:

People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that was destroyed by the U.S. military last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike, according to two American officials familiar with the matter. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.

The boat was under U.S. surveillance for a significant period of time. Those on board apparently spotted the U.S. aerial assets and altered the vessel’s course. U.S. officials said the boat appeared to have turned back toward shore, after which it was subjected to multiple strikes.

The boat and the people on it obviously posed no threat to U.S. forces or anyone else in the vicinity. The fact that the boat was also beginning to turn back makes the decision to attack it even more despicable. Launching additional strikes to murder the survivors of the first attack is monstrous. Double- and triple-tapping a defenseless target with drone strikes is an atrocity.

Benjamin Farley condemns the president’s illegal attack in a new article at Foreign Policy:

If the president can dispense with the law and its limits simply by calling one man a “narcoterrorist,” then he can proclaim anyone an outlaw. As the U.S. Army recognized a century and a half ago, murders carried out by any authority under this rationale represent “relapses into barbarism.”

The president and his minions are effectively claiming that he has unchecked, unreviewable authority to mete out death to anyone he deems to be a threat. For all intents and purposes, Trump is claiming to be an absolute ruler and he is acting like a barbaric despot. This is the danger that opponents of presidential usurpation and the warfare state have been warning against for decades, and now it is here.

This is lawless tyranny out in the open for everyone to see. The tyrant isn’t concealing his abuses of power. He is proud of them.

It is worth adding that there is really no such thing as a “narco-terrorist.” This is a label invented for the purpose of justifying the use of the military against drug traffickers. It is also obviously cheap propaganda to sell the public on the idea of murdering foreign civilians with munitions. Drug cartels and gangs are not terrorist organizations for the simple reason that they don’t engage in acts of terrorism. Criminals that use violence aren’t terrorists; they’re just felons. The administration slaps the terrorist label on anyone they wish to deport or kill, but all of it is a lie.

As many analysts have pointed out, the administration’s military buildup in the Caribbean makes no sense if impeding drug trafficking were the real purpose. Venezuela is not one of the main sources of cocaine in South America. It is at most a hub for transshipment, and the quantity of drugs coming out of Venezuela is relatively small. The so-called Cartel de los Soles doesn’t even exist, and it has been conjured up as a way to promote regime change in Caracas. The focus on Venezuela is opportunistic and driven by the same old hawkish agenda that we saw in the first Trump term.

It would be bad enough if this slaughter of eleven people was a one-off occurrence, but we have every reason to expect that it is just the beginning. According to the same report, “Two officials familiar with the strike were left with the impression that more attacks in the Caribbean would be forthcoming in the weeks ahead.” There have been reports that the president is also considering launching attacks inside Venezuela itself. If Trump were to order attacks on Venezuelan territory, he would be adding criminal aggression to the list of crimes in this campaign.

There is a war powers resolution that Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced today that would block Trump from attacking Venezuela or any of the groups that the administration has absurdly labeled as terrorist organizations. Congress should pass this resolution and reject the president’s lawless militarism. If Congress doesn’t act quickly to halt this new campaign, the president is likely to escalate and needlessly kill more people.