The president bragged about committing more murders at sea today:
President Donald Trump said the U.S. military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel.
Whoever carried out the attack that killed these people was following an illegal order. If this really was a war, this would be a war crime. Since there isn’t a real armed conflict happening, it is simply the murder of a boatful of people.
No government has the right to summarily execute people. The president is using the military to kill people on the vaguest suspicion that they may be committing a non-capital crime. It is horrifying that the president is ordering these killings, and it is even more disturbing that those orders are being carried out apparently without question.
Trump amped up his rhetoric to justify the latest murders by stressing that these men were “extremely violent drug traffickers” who were bringing a “deadly weapon” to the United States. Whatever crimes these men may have committed in the past or present, no one should take the government’s word for any of this.
When the government brings charges against anyone, it has to present evidence that the accused is guilty of the crime in question. Trump has adopted the methods of the Queen of Hearts where he hands down the death sentence before the verdict can be reached. No one wants to live in a world where the world’s most powerful government can kill anyone it dishonestly labels as a “terrorist.”
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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.
