The death toll from the president’s murder spree has now risen to 57 with the latest attacks:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor.
The illegal attacks are coming faster now as the spree approaches the end of its second month. First there were a few strikes spread out over weeks, and now there are several attacks each week and sometimes multiple strikes in one day. There have now been at least thirteen U.S. military strikes on civilians at sea. The administration shows no sign of slowing the pace of the senseless killing.
Hegseth is leaning heavily on comparisons with the “war on terror” in his public defense of the murders. He falsely asserts that the “narco-terrorists” have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda, and so he believes this gives the military the right to “hunt and kill” them. This is an insane rationalization for executing men who are at most minor cogs in a vast drug trade.
If these men had been tried and convicted for smuggling offenses, they probably would have been sentenced to five or ten years in prison. Condemning them to summary execution is despicable and criminal conduct. If there were any justice, Hegseth would have to answer for the deaths of these men and the others he has helped to murder.
Sen. Rand Paul compared the military’s summary executions to the way that the Chinese and Iranian governments punish drug dealers:
This is akin to what China does, to [what] Iran does with drug dealers; they summarily execute people without providing evidence to the public, so it’s wrong.
Paul is right to note the similarities, but the U.S. practice is arguably even worse. Our government presumes to have the right to kill anyone it labels a “terrorist” even when that person is nowhere near the United States. The military is using the tactics of authoritarian regimes and applying them on the open seas and perhaps soon to the territory of other countries.
