Trump's Word Games Can't Conceal the Murderous Reality of His Anti-Drug Strategy: Calling Suspected Cocaine Smugglers 'Combatants' Does Not Justify Summarily Executing Them

Jacob Sullum
Tue, 09 Dec 2025 17:39:59 -0800
Opinion

I have a riddle for you. If we call a drug smuggler a combatant, how many combatants died when SEAL Team 6 killed 11 men on a cocaine boat near Venezuela on Sept. 2?

Zero, because calling a drug smuggler a combatant does not make him a combatant. That reality goes to the heart of the morally and legally bankrupt justification for President Donald Trump's bloodthirsty anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which began on Sept. 2 and so far has killed 87 people in 22 attacks.

The Sept. 2 operation is newly controversial because it included a follow-up missile strike that blew apart two defenseless survivors of the initial attack as they clung to the smoldering wreckage. But all these attacks entail the use of deadly force in circumstances that do not justify it.
Updated: Wed Dec 10, 2025

I have a riddle for you. If we call a drug smuggler a combatant, how many combatants died when SEAL Team 6 killed 11 men on a cocaine boat near Venezuela on Sept. 2?

Zero, because calling a drug smuggler a combatant does not make him a combatant. That reality goes to the heart of the morally and legally bankrupt justification for President Donald Trump's bloodthirsty anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which began on Sept. 2 and so far has killed 87 people in 22 attacks.

The Sept. 2 operation is newly controversial because it included a follow-up missile strike that blew apart two defenseless survivors of the initial attack as they clung to the smoldering wreckage. But all these attacks entail the use of deadly force in circumstances that do not justify it.

Trump conflates drug smuggling with violent aggression, saying it amounts to "an armed attack against the United States" that requires a lethal military response. According to that counterintuitive theory, suspected cocaine smugglers are "combatants" who can be killed at will, and their vessels pose a "threat" to national security that can be neutralized only by completely destroying them.

In reality, Americans want cocaine, and criminal organizations are happy to supply it. The government does not approve of that trade, which it has long sought to suppress by interdicting cocaine and arresting smugglers.

Trump, who accurately calls that approach "totally ineffective," thinks killing suspected drug couriers, from a distance and in cold blood, will achieve the impossible goal of preventing Americans from consuming politically disfavored intoxicants. He is wrong about that. But even if he were right, the goal of disrupting and deterring drug smuggling would not justify summarily executing criminal suspects without legal authorization or any semblance of due process.

That is why Trump claims the U.S. military is at war with "narcoterrorists." But the "non-international armed conflict" that Trump perceives does not fit the legal definition of that term and has not been recognized by Congress.

The resulting violence is so one-sided that the government's lawyers claim blowing up suspected drug boats does not qualify as "hostilities" under the War Powers Resolution because U.S. personnel face no plausible risk of casualties. So we are talking about an "armed conflict" that does not involve "hostilities" yet somehow does involve enemy "combatants," albeit combatants who are not actually engaged in combat.

The debate about the Sept. 2 attack underlines that point. Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation, reportedly told lawmakers the boat was heading for Suriname — i.e., away from the United States — with cocaine ultimately destined for Europe or Africa.

Even if you accept the preposterous premise that transporting cocaine is equivalent to an "armed attack," it is hard to see how this boat posed any sort of threat to the United States. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nevertheless deemed it a legitimate military target, and he says Bradley "made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat."

According to Hegseth, that "threat" remained even after the capsized bow was all that remained of the boat. Bradley decided he had to kill the two helpless, unarmed survivors because he thought they could have tried to recover whatever cocaine might have remained on the wreck.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, avers that the flailing men were "trying to flip the boat" so they "could stay in the fight." But there was no "fight" to stay in because neither those men nor the nine others were attacking U.S. military personnel or any other American targets.

Although the Defense Department's Law of War manual says "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal," Cotton claims the survivors were not truly "shipwrecked" because part of their boat remained afloat and may have contained salvageable cocaine. The logic of Trump's murderous anti-drug strategy effectively blesses what the law of war theoretically prohibits.