The Real Reason For Boat Strike ‘Double Taps’ Is Preventing Survivors From Challenging Extrajudicial Killings In Court

Legal Issues

from the all-ghouls-all-the-time dept

The Trump Administration’s murder-in-international-waters program debuted far ahead of its legal rationale. Many people inside the administration were blindsided by this sudden escalation. Those expected to stay on top of these things — military oversight, congressional committees, etc. — found they were even further behind the curve than the late-arriving “justification” for extrajudicial killings of alleged “narco-terrorists” that used to be handled by interdiction efforts that left everyone alive and anything of value (drugs, boats, weapons) in the hands of the US government and its foreign partners.

This was something new and horrible from a regime already known for its awfulness. Even after the belated (and then hastily revised) justification was delivered by the Office of Legal Counsel, it was difficult to see how the US government could justify extrajudicial killings of alleged “terrorists” who were — at worst — simply moving narcotics from point A to point B.

The administration’s bizarre insistence that the mere existence of an international drug trade constituted a deliberate, violent attack on America was further undercut by a lot of inconvenient facts. First of all, most of those being killed had no connection to the top levels of drug cartels. They were merely mules tasked with transporting drugs. In other cases — including the one that involved a double-tap strike (which was actually four strikes) to ensure the survivors clinging to boat wreckage could no longer be referred to as “survivors” — the drugs allegedly being trafficked were headed to midpoints that suggested the narcotics were actually headed to Europe, rather than the United States.

To be clear, this administration doesn’t actually care whether or not it engages in murder or other acts of violence. What it does care about is allowing the killing to continue for as long as possible before the system of checks and balances finally gets around to dialing back the murders a bit.

A recent article from the New York Times gives the game away, even if the lede gets a bit buried. The headline mentions a White House “scramble” to “deal with” people who survived initial extrajudicial killing attempts. In one case, two survivors were rescued by the US military after failing to die during the initial strike. The White House said they should be sent to El Salvador’s torture prison. The State Department — currently headed by Marco Rubio — said this simply wasn’t possible. Both survivors ended up being sent back to their countries of origin.

Two weeks later, another murder attempt failed to murder everyone on the boat, leading to another hasty conference call between the White House, career diplomats, and Defense Department leadership. The ultimate goal was to get rid of these people as quickly as possible, which necessarily involved hasty arrangements made with government officials in their home countries.

The real reason for these hasty talks — and the secrecy surrounding them — is this: The administration definitely doesn’t seem confident that it’s fully justified in ordering military members to engage in actual war crimes; specifically, the murder of people military bylaws make clear they are supposed to be rescuing.

The two attacks discussed above happened nearly two months after the double-tap boat strike that definitely looks like a war crime. But the Trump administration definitely isn’t going to bring back survivors to face justice by charging them and giving them their day in court. If it does that, it might lose everything it likes about murdering people in international waters.

Legal cases in the United States involving survivors would force the administration to present more information to try to back up its rationale for the attacks.

[…]

“From the administration’s point of view, there are good reasons to be averse to bringing survivors to Guantánamo Bay or to the continental United States,” [former State Dept. lawyer Brian Finucane] said.

If the U.S. military brings the survivors to the Navy-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, lawyers defending them could file a habeas corpus lawsuit in U.S. federal court questioning whether there really is an armed conflict, for legal purposes, between the United States and cartels. Congress has not authorized the United States to engage in any such conflict.

To use the ever-popular poker parlance, that’s an obvious “tell” — something that indicates the administration has very little confidence in the legal rationale for these extrajudicial killings. If it thought it’s arguments had a very good chance of holding up in court, it wouldn’t be hastily returning “narco-terrorists” to their home countries as quickly and quietly as possible, where they’ll presumably immediately resume their “narco-terrorism.”

That’s also why the first double-tap strike occurred only days into Trump’s undeclared war on alleged drug boats. As far as we know, this hasn’t been repeated, despite everyone who hasn’t already resigned from the Defense Department (or been thrown under the bus by those whose positions are unassailable thanks to their deference to Trump) claiming either ignorance of the double-strike or saying lots of stuff about “saving” the country from being murdered by inanimate fentanyl (or whatever).

Any survivor is just another chance to prove the US government wrong. And if it isn’t immediately clear survivors have somewhere to be hastily dumped, you can probably assume the military will resort to Plan B: mob-style “hits” to make sure these witnesses can’t talk.

Filed Under: boat strikes, crimes against humanity, defense department, doj, donald trump, extrajudicial killings, frank bradley, marco rubio, mass deportation, murder, pete hegseth, trump administration, venezuela, war on drugs