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.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
