Donald Trump keeps sending the US military to murder people on boats, claiming that (suspected!) drug smugglers are terrorist attackers with whom the US is at war, and no, the administration doesn’t have to show any proof that’s who we’re hitting with missiles fired by drones. As of this week, the US has killed at least 75 people in the strikes. Even if there’s little evidence the boats are carrying drugs, whether the drugs are headed to the US, or even whether the people on the boats really are affiliated with the gangs with which the US pretends it’s “at war.”
Somehow, though, that unarguable logic hasn’t persuaded the United Kingdom, CNN reported Tuesday. After years of working with the US to fight narcotics trafficking in the Caribbean — as a matter of law enforcement — our Special Relationship Ally across the Atlantic decided about a month ago to stop sharing intelligence on possible drug shipments by boat, according to “sources familiar with the matter.” In short, the UK considers our missile attacks on civilian shipping illegal, because they are illegal, and doesn’t want to be complicit in Trump’s war crimes, because they are war crimes.
The former British Empire still controls a lot of territory in the Caribbean and runs intelligence operations there, and has long tipped the US off about boats that might be carrying drugs. In normal times, that meant the Coast Guard would interdict the vessels and search them. If drugs were found, they’d be seized and the boats’ crews would be arrested.
The intelligence was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, a task force stationed in Florida that includes representatives from a number of partner nations and works to reduce the illicit drug trade.
But in September Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth started insisting that boats suspected of carrying drugs were “attacking” the US with “deadly weapons,” and that blowing boats and their crews to smithereens was a matter of “self defense.” As with everything else this administration does, the pretended legal basis was just cobbled together from squinting funny at international law so Trump could send the military to carry out extrajudicial killings just like the dictatorships he so admires.
UK officials don’t buy the Trump administration’s weird insistence that the strikes are legal, so to avoid being accessories to murder, the Brits quietly paused sharing intel reports the US might use to choose targets. British defense — or defence — officials agree with the assessment of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk that the strikes are “extrajudicial killings” that violate international law, according to CNN’s sources.
CNN also reported in October that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that the military strikes against drug smugglers are A-OK as long as the administration says the boats are affiliated with cartels it has designated as “terrorist organizations,” although that opinion is classified and the list of terrorist cartels is also secret. As long as Trump says it’s a war, it’s perfectly legal and Trump can order people killed, supposedly in compliance with “the Law of Armed Conflict.”
Sure, some egghead “experts” on international law say that many of the murder strikes are still legally suspect even if civilian criminal gangs, which really are not nations, get labeled as “terrorists.”
Several boats hit by the US have either been stationary or were turning around when they were attacked, CNN has reported, undermining the administration’s claim that they posed an imminent threat that could not be dealt with through interdiction and arrest.
Stupid international laws like that are just designed to keep big strong leaders like Trump from bringing those terrorists to extrajudicial justice. Honestly, the Brits should be grateful that Dear Leader and War Man Pete War Secretary of War are keeping them safe from all the drugs. Questioning the legality of murder on the seas is just defending people who are trying to kill us all with drugs.
Why are you so friendly with people trying to kill Americans, United Kingdom? Sure would be a shame if the administration decided some UK-flagged fishing boats are smuggling drugs, especially if they were near those awful wind turbines that spoil the view from Trump’s golf course in Scotland.
[CNN]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d prefer to make a one-time donation, this button is not connected to any missile installations. That we know of.
In related news, AP reports that the USS Gerald Ford is in position for the Epstein Files discharge vote.
Trump has a little dinghy.