250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence tied the United States to the idea of human rights, first and foremost among them the right to life. The Declaration goes on to denounce King George III for “plunder[ing] our seas, ravag[ing] our coasts,… and destroy[ing] the lives of our people.” It is shocking, then, that the United States military, under the direction of President Trump and War Secretary Hegseth, has perpetrated these same wrongs against foreign citizens in international waters.
As of now, 239 people have been killed in U.S. airstrikes in the Caribbean against alleged drug smuggling boats. It seems almost certain that some of those killed were simply innocent fishermen. Other victims were indeed smuggling drugs, albeit out of financial desperation. But all of those killed were human beings who should be alive today, and their deaths have created a climate of fear that has devastated fishing communities near the Caribbean.
The legal authority to conduct these strikes simply does not exist. The U.S. military cannot kill civilians — including those suspected of crimes — unless they pose an imminent threat. “Narcoterrorism” is a legal fiction — drug trafficking is a crime, not an act of terrorism, and the President’s power to designate foreign entities as “terrorist” organizations does not extend to the unilateral use of military force. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has come up with another, contorted explanation: that the boat strikes are designed to destroy a revenue source for the cartels that could be used to purchase military equipment to engage in armed attacks against the United States. Yet the OLC has failed to identify any such armed attacks. Even some prominent legal conservatives have rejected the Trump Administration’s rationales for the strikes. Much scrutiny has been placed on a particularly egregious case, in which a boat was apparently struck a second time to kill survivors of the initial strike. But we should not allow a justified focus on this specific incident to distract us from the illegality of the entire campaign.
Neither law nor morality can be expected to bind the Trump administration. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller spelled out the administration’s view of foreign policy in an interview in which he defended President Trump’s threats to seize Greenland: “We live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” It is no accident that Miller, who helped mastermind the strikes, would next ask Americans to accept the potential invasion of the sovereign territory of a U.S. ally. He clearly thinks that the U.S. is entitled to act thuggishly, under the auspices of “Might Makes Right.”
Individual rights have always been central to the American ideal and have mobilized generations of reformers to make the Declaration of Independence’s promise a reality. If the U.S. government can trample on individual rights abroad — meaning it can respond to suspected crimes not with arrests and trials but with missiles — it has abdicated its responsibility to act according to American principles. And if the U.S. government fails to respect American principles abroad, there is no reason to believe it will have any regard for such principles at home. What Trump, Hegseth, and Miller have launched is not really a war against drug trafficking but a war on the soul of America in which the victims of these strikes have been the first casualties, but may be far from the last.
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