{"id":55507,"date":"2025-10-06T10:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=55507"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:51:09","slug":"end-the-presidents-caribbean-murder-spree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/06\/end-the-presidents-caribbean-murder-spree\/","title":{"rendered":"End the President’s Caribbean Murder Spree"},"content":{"rendered":"

W.J. Hennigan makes<\/a> the mistake of accepting Trump\u2019s framing of his Caribbean murder spree as an armed conflict:<\/p>\n

The Trump administration told Congress this week that the United States is engaged in an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with drug cartels.<\/em><\/p>\n

The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight. Citizens aren\u2019t in possession of the metrics by which to judge the administration\u2019s pursuit of those goals.<\/em><\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t been told which specific drugs they seek to stop. We haven\u2019t been told much about which specific groups they seek to destroy. We haven\u2019t been told much about what legal authorities they are acting on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Withholding this information from the American public is the administration\u2019s way to escape scrutiny. At the very least, the country deserves some evidence of whether the military operation is working.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Trump administration hasn\u2019t kept the public informed about the \u201cconflict\u201d beyond boasting about the killing, but that\u2019s because there is no conflict and everything they have said to justify their actions is a lie. The president is arbitrarily having civilians murdered and then bragging about it to the world, and we\u2019re supposed to be concerned about not having the \u201cmetrics\u201d to judge whether the murder spree is successful? The administration could provide made-up answers to all of these questions, but it wouldn\u2019t make the policy any more defensible or legal.<\/p>\n

If this were a remotely legitimate use of the military, Hennigan\u2019s practical objections and demands for greater transparency would make sense. There is nothing legitimate about any of this. The designations of cartels and gangs as terrorist organizations are nonsense, and those designations don\u2019t give the president license to use the military against them in any case. The president is not an absolute ruler. He cannot be permitted to have people summarily executed on his whim.<\/p>\n

Hennigan writes, \u201cIt\u2019s good that Mr. Trump has decided to inform Congress that the U.S. military is engaged in an armed conflict.\u201d This is not a good thing. There is no conflict. There is just one-sided killing of civilians. The president is trying to dress up his murders as a legitimate use of force, and they aren\u2019t. If there really were a conflict, the president shouldn\u2019t be informing Congress after he already started it. If there were a legitimate reason to conduct a military campaign in the Caribbean, the president should seek Congressional authorization first. Trump\u2019s belated notice to Congress that he decided to start killing civilians in the name of fighting drug smuggling is an affront to our constitutional system.<\/p>\n

It is true that murdering civilians on boats isn\u2019t going to make a dent in the drug trade, but dwelling on the attacks\u2019 ineffectiveness misses the point. The administration has no evidence that these attacks are \u201cworking,\u201d but we shouldn\u2019t care if they did have some. Does murdering civilians \u201cwork\u201d? That is obviously the wrong question. The only question we should be asking is when Congress will remove the president from office for his crimes.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

W.J. Hennigan makes the mistake of accepting Trump\u2019s framing of his Caribbean murder spree as an armed conflict: The Trump administration told Congress this week that the United States is engaged in an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with drug cartels. The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight. Citizens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[747],"class_list":["post-55507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"The president is openly trampling on U.S. and international law and killing people because he feels like it. "},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55507"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55511,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55507\/revisions\/55511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55507"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}