The United States now has a Department of War (again).
The U.S. military killed 11 people last week in a strike against a boat in the Caribbean the Trump administration said was carrying drugs and terrorists.
The U.S. Navy has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters, typically with a Coast Guard officer temporarily in charge to invoke law enforcement authority. Tuesday’s direct attack in the Caribbean was a marked departure from that decades-long approach.
Pentagon officials were still working on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”
Under the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war authorization for use of military force.
The 2001 Congress allowed force “against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”
But that law does not authorize war against unrelated groups that the executive branch has chosen to label as “terrorists.”
The specific details of the strike, targeting suspected drug smugglers, are novel, but — in a presidency defined by unprecedented uses of executive power — this is a much more typical type of presidential power grab.
Taking advantage of the fact that Democratic politicians will likely be hesitant to criticize them — lest they be seen as defending drug traffickers — the administration has shrugged off the legal worries.
The White House has suggested that further operations could be coming and “much larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge [the country’s leader Nicolas] Maduro from power.”
The lack of information and transparency from the administration is very concerning.
The Pentagon has been amassing a small armada of warships in the southern Caribbean, to include three guided-missile destroyers.
History has taught us many lessons and we should pay attention to its signs because we might be heading towards World War III
