We’re executing people with impunity. Why are so many of us OK with this?
In clear violation of the law, the Trump administration has killed at least 42 people across 10 reported strikes on boats that were allegedly carrying drugs.
The only thing more shocking than Donald Trump having dozens of people killed on his word — no trial, no jury, just execution — is that more than 70% of voters seem to be fine with this. Even when broken down by political identification, 89% of GOP supporters, 67% of independents, and 56% of Democrats are all right with the U.S. military blowing up civilians.
Well, maybe.
The polling that produced those stomach-turning results comes from a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released earlier this month, with a headline takeaway that most voters support Trump’s strikes on boats smuggling drugs.
As the administration escalates its attack on alleged smugglers in international waters, this wide approval is bad news for anyone who cares about (in alphabetical order) human rights, international law, and the Ten Commandments.
However, I am counting on something I usually rail against — how uninformed most people are — to optimistically dismiss these poll numbers as a bad question about an abhorrent policy.
You see, the question in the poll was, “Do you support or oppose the U.S. destroying boats bringing drugs into the United States from South America?” Asked in that manner, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were torn between answering “Absolutely!” or “Totally!” After all, who wouldn’t want to stop dangerous drugs from coming into the country?
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Of course, the way that question should have been asked is, Do you support or oppose the U.S. destroying boats nowhere near the United States and killing their crew under the mere suspicion they are traveling with drugs?
I hope the answer to that question would have been “Hell no!” or, as U.S. Sen. Rand Paul more elegantly put it when speaking on Fox Business recently, “You cannot have a policy where you just allege that someone is guilty of something, and then kill them.”
Unlike the voters who were presented with an anodyne version of the president’s actions, the Republican senator from Kentucky knows the deadly reality. At least 42 people have been killed across 10 reported strikes on boats as of Friday; eight bombings occurred in the Caribbean, and two in the Pacific.
The administration’s legal rationale seems to be that the drug cartels (allegedly) running these boats are designated foreign terrorist organizations, and represent a clear and present danger to the American people, and must be dealt with accordingly. Or, as the president so chillingly put it at a news conference Thursday: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re gonna kill them. They’re gonna be, like, dead.”
Like, yikes.
Where do you start? A motorboat that (maybe) is carrying drugs 1,000 miles from a U.S. coastline is hardly an imminent threat, and most of the strikes have involved Venezuelan vessels, a country that plays a very small role in drugs that reach the U.S.
Even if these are drug runners, trafficking is not a capital crime. And let’s say that it was, you must prove a crime has been committed before you pass sentence, yet all we have to go by are the administration’s claims. Forgive me for doubting, but this is the same bunch who sent hundreds of immigrants to a Salvadoran torture prison, saying they were the “worst of the worst,” only for it to come out that their only sin was having the wrong kind of tattoos.
For Trump’s supporters, didn’t the president run on keeping us out of foreign entanglements, on America no longer being the world’s policeman? Because this sounds a lot like a police officer who’s way out of his jurisdiction deciding to shoot someone for loitering.
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If there were any doubts about the real motives of Trump’s strikes, consider the fate of two survivors of the U.S. attack on Oct. 16. If you think these two men were detained, questioned, and booked for processing as dangerous members of a foreign terrorist organization who merit death on sight, then you will be sadly disappointed to hear they were released.
Responsible members of Congress have tried to rein in the administration’s blatant lawlessness.
An Oct. 18 resolution to block the U.S. military from engaging in hostilities with “any non-state organization engaged in the promotion, trafficking, and distribution of illegal drugs and other related activities” without congressional authorization was voted down in the Senate.
While most Republican senators went on the record with allowing the president to freely continue killing, U.S. Sens. Paul and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted their conscience. On the Democratic side, Pennsylvania’s own John Fetterman, we must assume, also voted his when joining the GOP majority.
Folks like Fetterman have no excuse. They know what the administration is doing and condone it. My hope is that as more people learn the details of what’s happening, as voters pay attention to what is being done in our name, they will respond accordingly.
The only principled reaction to what Trump is doing should be revulsion.