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On Friday, the United States military, at Donald Trump’s orders, bombed a speedboat in international waters, killing three people, for the alleged crime of drug trafficking. It was the third such bombing in as many weeks, bringing the death toll of the administration’s extrajudicial campaign to at least seventeen. “There was no conceivable legal authority for these killings,” writes David Cole in the NYR Online:

We are not at war with drug traffickers. The “war on drugs” is a metaphor, not a legal term of art that authorizes killing the “enemy.” The human beings on these boats were civilians, and even if there were an actual war going on, the laws of war prohibit targeting civilians unless they are directly engaged in hostilities. Even if the boats’ occupants were, as the administration alleges, carrying illegal drugs…that offense would at most have authorized their arrest, trial, and, if convicted, incarceration for a period of years. It would not authorize the death penalty, much less their summary execution without trial.

Indeed, Cole elaborates, “In the absence of any conceivable military justification for these acts, it is difficult to view them as anything but premeditated murder, pure and simple.”

Below, alongside Cole’s essay, are four articles from our archive about the history of presidents invoking war powers—whether or not the United States is at war—to justify the use of lethal force.

David Cole
Getting Away with Murder

Trump has now ordered the killing of at least seventeen people on the high seas—with no accountability.

David Cole
Obama’s Unauthorized War

In his speech, President Obama avoided the word “war,” but that is the common word for the kind of military campaign he described. And under our Constitution, the president cannot go to war without congressional approval.

—September 11, 2014

Mark Danner
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites

A naked man chained in a small, very cold, very white room is for several days strapped to a bed, then for several weeks shackled to a chair, bathed unceasingly in white light, bombarded constantly with loud sound, deprived of food; and whenever, despite cold, light, noise, hunger, the hours and days force his eyelids down, cold water is sprayed in his face to force them up.

One can translate these procedures into terms of art: “Change of Scenery Down.” “Removal of Clothing.” “Use of Stress Positions.” “Dietary Manipulation.” “Environmental Manipulation.” “Sleep Adjustment.” “Isolation.” “Sleep Deprivation.” “Use of Noise to Induce Stress.” All these terms and many others can be found, for example, in documents associated with the debate about interrogation and “counter-resistance” carried on by Pentagon and Justice Department officials beginning in 2002.

—April 9, 2009

Joan Didion
The Lion King

“The invasion of Grenada is instructive, because the operation, which was justified by the administration because a ten-thousand-foot landing strip was under construction on the island and secondarily (or primarily, depending on who was talking) because American students were ‘captive’ at an island medical school (in fact they could have left on either regularly scheduled or charter flights), involved one of Reagan’s few overt (and his only, on his own terms, ‘successful’) uses of military power.”

—December 18, 1997

James Chace
The Endless War

In 1983 Central America is a land ravaged by a war without any foreseeable end. While the fighting could be moderated, if not ended, by negotiations, the major power involved in the region, the United States, shows no real disposition to negotiate. Instead, Washington has chosen a military approach to the struggle between the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and their exile antagonists—the so-called contras, based in neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica. In the same way, Washington has chosen to support the Salvadoran military in its war against the guerrillas, even though the armed forces demonstrate a wanton disregard for human rights, thus helping to prolong the very war the United States is committed to bringing to an end. The undeclared aim of the Reagan administration is to eradicate the existence of and possibility for “Marxist-Leninist” states in the region. By emphasizing ideological purity rather than the need for workable security guarantees, and by having abandoned diplomacy for military actions, the US has made it virtually impossible to disentangle itself militarily from the region.

—December 8, 1983

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