These deadly US boat strikes are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality
The Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise – and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description.
On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats – vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.
This has been happening for months, but the issue has only just drawn political heat thanks to a Washington Post investigation of the first such attack on 2 September. The paper reported that US forces hit the targeted boat once, then hit it again – the second strike killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage. According to the Post, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had issued a verbal command to “kill them all”.
Now that incident is under congressional scrutiny, with even some Republicans uneasy about what appears to be a clearcut case of a war crime. The defence department’s own Law of War manual forbids precisely this kind of action, spelling it out in black and white on page 448: “Members of the armed forced and other persons … who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances.” Not that you should need a manual to tell you that. The law of the sea demands that you rescue those at risk of drowning; basic human decency demands that you don’t fire on them.
