The US military announced this week that it had killed four “narco-terrorists” by blowing up another boat in the Caribbean. This now brings the military death toll from these types of military boat killings to 235 people.
I have addressed these types of killings in the past, but as long as the US national-security establishment continues to engage in them, it is important to continue highlighting the evil nature of these killings.
There are several points that I wish to emphasize about these boat killings:
1. Simply because it is the military doing the killing does not mean that wartime rules apply. That’s because the military is operating in a police capacity by enforcing the US “war on drugs.” The drug “war” is not real war — that’s just a figure of speech. Ordinarily, it is the DEA or the local police who are enforcing America’s decades-old drug war. Here, the military is stepping into the shoes of the DEA by helping to enforce the federal government’s drug laws. That means that the same principles of criminal justice apply to the military as they do to the DEA. The fact that US officials claim to be “at war” against drug dealers is obviously just a ruse to enable them to ignore the Constitution.
2. The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution expressly prohibits federal officials from depriving people of life without due process of law, which necessarily means charging people with crimes and according them a trial. That’s obviously not what the military is doing with its killings of those people in boats on the high seas. No criminal indictment. No trial. No opportunity to contest the government’s evidence or accusation. Simply summary executions based on the government’s unilateral determination that the occupants are drug traffickers.
3. Given the lack of due process of law, the military killings of these boat people operate as state-inflicted assassinations. One big advantage of using the military, rather than the DEA, to commit these assassinations is that military operations traditionally receive extraordinary judicial deference, especially when the executive branch invokes national security and armed conflict.
4. It is the height of hypocrisy to have the military enforcing criminal laws outside the United States, given that US law prohibits the military from enforcing criminal laws inside the United States. If it’s a bad idea for the military to be involved in law enforcement against Americans, then it’s a bad idea for the military to be involved in law enforcement against foreign citizens.
5. The killings amount to military cowardice, akin to a federal official shooting a criminal suspect in the back. Given the overwhelming power of the military, it could easily approach people in boats and demand that they surrender. Instead, the military chooses to kill them, knowing that for all practical purposes. the victims pose no danger whatsoever to the powerful military armada charged with killing them. After all, given that the Coast Guard’s policy is based on stopping boats, searching them, taking suspects into custody, and returning suspects to the U.S for trial, there is no good reason why the military can’t follow that same policy.
6. The omnipotent, non-reviewable military power to assassinate people in the enforcement of the federal government’s drug war arguably applies to everyone, including Americans. The fact that the US government is exercising its assassination power against drug-war suspects here in the United States as of now doesn’t mean that it can’t exercise such power in the future.
7. The fact that the military claims to have “intelligence” pointing toward criminal culpability of the victims is irrelevant from both a legal and a moral standpoint. Under America’s original criminal-justice principles, any such “intelligence” must be tested in a court of law, especially since it oftentimes proves to be faulty. Moreover, as most people know by now, federal officials have been known to make up or concoct evidence as a way to frame people who they are convinced are criminals. That’s one of the reasons we have trials in America’s criminal-justice system rather than have the DEA or the cops simply shoot and kill drug-war suspects.
8. These military drug-war killings are what we would expect from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, such as North Korea, Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia, not with a nation that professes adherence to due process of law.
9. The military’s boat killings reflect a deep denigration of the value of human life, especially for foreign citizens.
10. The drug-war killings constitute a grave violation of God’s sacred commandment against murder.
11. The military’s boat killings are no different in principle from what former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is being criminally prosecuted for by the International Criminal Court. He stands accused of ordering his officials to summarily kill drug war suspects without according them due process of law.
12. Regardless of how many people the US military kills in the enforcement of the federal government’s drug laws, the drug war will never be “won.” It will go on forever, with the national-security establishment and the rest of the federal government gaining ever-more destructive power over both Americans and foreigners — brutal police-state power that will continue to destroy people’s liberty and privacy.
13. No government, including the US government, wields the legitimate moral authority to punish anyone for possessing, ingesting, or distributing any drug whatsoever. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to possess, ingest, or distribute any drug they want.
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