Trump expands boat strikes to Pacific, killing 5 more

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the U.S. military had destroyed two more alleged drug smuggling boats in international waters, killing five people.

President Donald Trump’s controversial campaign to summarily kill “narcoterrorists” has now claimed nine vessels and 37 lives since September, though these were the first strikes in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Caribbean.

Who said what

Trump Tuesday called the newest strikes “violent” and “amazing” and said “we have legal authority where we’re allowed to do that.” But the administration has neither provided evidence the targeted boats were transporting narcotics nor “publicly articulated how it believes the law allows for taking the lives of suspected drug runners,” The Washington Post said. “Numerous law-of-war experts have said the strikes are unlawful.”

Striking the Pacific coast of South America “significantly expanded” Trump’s drug war, “targeting a new country of origin — Colombia,” Politico said. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. last weekend of murdering an innocent “lifelong fisherman” in one of its strikes, Trump called Petro an “illegal drug leader” and said he would hit Colombia with new tariffs and slash U.S. aid, “much of which,” Politico said, “supported joint anti-drug trafficking initiatives” in the world’s top producer of cocaine.

“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth wrote on social media, justifying the strikes. Trump has designated some cartels as terrorist organizations, but “drug cartels are motivated by the pursuit of illicit profits,” not “religious or ideological goals,” The New York Times said, and “in any case,” the terrorist designation “does not convey legal authority to kill their members.”

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What next?

“Some Republican lawmakers have asked the White House for more clarification on its legal justification” for the strikes, The Associated Press said, “while Democrats insist they are violations of U.S. and international law.” Trump said Wednesday he would “probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we are doing” before starting to “hit” cartels on land, but “we don’t have to do that.”