U.S. Military Keeps Killing at Sea Without Explaining Legal Justification

Over the past months, the U.S. military has escalated a deadly campaign against small boats in the Eastern Pacific, killing nearly 200 people. These strikes, carried out by U.S. Southern Command, are routinely justified with vague references to terrorism, drug trafficking, and intelligence reports. But the one question that truly matters remains unanswered: under what legal rule are these people lawful targets for lethal force?

This issue is urgent because just a month ago, Southern Command’s Gen. Francis Donovan told Congress that these strikes “aren’t the answer.” Yet since then, the strikes have only increased, with at least nine more attacks. Initially touted by President Trump and authorized under his presidential authority, responsibility now falls on Donovan. Whoever claims the legal authority, the U.S. government owes a clear, plain-English explanation of the law permitting this use of deadly force.

Let’s assume everything the military says is true: the boats carry drugs, their occupants are linked to cartels, intelligence is solid. That at most establishes suspicion of a crime—drug trafficking—a crime, not a death sentence. The U.S. Constitution does not grant the president the power to execute people based on suspicion or accusations alone.

Labeling these traffickers “narco-terrorists” does not solve the legal problem. Terrorist designations carry consequences but do not automatically authorize lethal force or transform all suspected associates into lawful targets. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force was aimed at those responsible for 9/11 and aligned forces, not drug cartels. If the administration claims otherwise, it must specify where that authority comes from.

Even more disturbing is a reported legal theory that the strikes target the drugs or chemicals themselves, with human beings treated as collateral cargo. This is grotesque. No law enforcement officer can justify firing rockets at a vehicle by claiming they were targeting the illicit goods and not the people inside. Human lives cannot be reduced to mere cargo.

The government need not reveal classified intelligence to clarify this. If these strikes are self-defense, explain how two men in an open boat hundreds of miles offshore posed an imminent threat. If this is armed conflict, identify who Congress has authorized the military to fight. If the drugs are the target, defend that theory publicly. Continuing to kill people under secret legal memos and demanding blind trust is unacceptable.

Military officers executing these orders must ask tough questions. They are trained to distinguish lawful combat from unlawful killing. If the legal justification cannot be publicly defended or aligned with the Constitution, simply following orders is not enough.

Congress must act too. It is not enough to remind troops to disobey unlawful orders after the fact. The Armed Services Committee should call Gen. Donovan back under oath to explain the legal basis for these strikes.

This is not a mere technicality. It is about the use of lethal force against human beings under a legal theory the government refuses to explain. If the U.S. believes these killings are lawful, it must say so publicly. If it will not, the strikes must stop. And if no lawful justification exists, accountability must follow.

Killing people without public legal justification is not normal, not constitutional, and not something a free nation can accept. The U.S. government owes the public transparency and accountability now.