On August 24, the United States military struck another small boat in the eastern Pacific and killed the two people aboard. It was not an isolated incident. According to U.S. Southern Command, the campaign had by then killed at least 223 people in 67 strikes against boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Operation Southern Spear. Brown University's Costs of War project says Southern Spear has cost at least $4.7 billion through March 31.
I am seventy-nine years old and I have lived through
enough American history to know that our government has done terrible things
before. What is happening now is different. There is no reasonable argument to be made that these actions are not war crimes
or crimes against humanity. I have seen
some questionable decisions in the past, but I have never seen military
commanders order their pilots and sailors to execute what is so obviously a
crime.
The administration says the boats are carrying drugs and
the people aboard are members of cartels or “narco-terrorist” organizations.
Perhaps some are. Drug smuggling is a crime, and people who engage in it should
be arrested and prosecuted.
But the United States knows how to do that.
The Coast Guard regularly intercepts suspected smuggling
vessels in international waters, disables them when necessary, boards them,
seizes the drugs and arrests the people aboard. In June, for example, the Coast
Guard reported three interdictions in the eastern Pacific that produced roughly
7,720 pounds of cocaine and 4,000 pounds of marijuana, with the vessels
boarded and the crews apprehended. In January, another interdiction north of
Puerto Rico seized more than 1,100 pounds of cocaine and arrested three men.
That is law enforcement.
Southern Spear is something different. The military
approaches small vessels and destroys them, killing the people aboard. They are
civilians, maybe criminals, though no proof has been shown. There is no arrest, no courtroom and no opportunity to surrender.
And the available evidence raises questions about who
some of these people actually were.
In December 2025, a burned-out boat from one of the
strikes washed ashore on Colombia's Guajira Peninsula. Two bodies were
recovered. Most of the packets found among the wreckage were empty; several
contained traces of what appeared to be marijuana. Colombian experts told the New York Times
that marijuana and cocaine smuggling in the region is often conducted by small,
community-based operations rather than large cartels. One researcher described
people who might carry marijuana one day, cocaine another day, and fish
another.
That does not make them innocent. If the occupants of
that boat were criminals, at best they were petty criminals.
A fisherman or a small-time smuggler is still a civilian. He is not part of an armed conflict. There is
little difference between Trump and Hegseth and Bukele of El Salvador or
Duterte of the Philippines, who is now imprisoned in the Hague awaiting trial
for his crimes. This is state sponsored vigilanteism ordered by the President of the United States. A crime does not
automatically become an act of war because the government gives it a military
name.
The part that bothers me the most is that Trump has ordered
military officers to be complicit in committing crimes, crimes prohibited by
their military oath and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In press conferences Hegseth and Trump present their crimes like
snuff films.
The New York Times has also reported on
Ecuadorian fishermen who described attacks by English-speaking men wearing U.S.
flag insignia. One fishing vessel disappeared with eight of its ten crew
members still missing. The Times found evidence consistent with U.S.
surveillance of the boats, although it could not establish who carried out the
attacks.
I have no doubt that Americans were involved. Whether
they were acting for the CIA, the Defense Department or the DEA. I can’t prove it but it’s pretty
obvious. If we had a Congress I would
demand they open an investigation. Who
are these people? And who's paying
them?
For most of my lifetime, the United States has argued
that there are laws governing war and rules protecting civilians and prisoners.
We have violated those principles before. The Bush administration's torture
program and indefinite detention after September 11 were enormous breaches of
American law and international norms. The Obama administration's drone campaign
raised grave questions about civilian casualties and targeted killings outside
conventional battlefields.
These previous events make it more important than ever to
acknowledge it now and take action. We
are further down the road to being a pariah state than ever before.
Legal specialists cited by the Times have argued
that these strikes amount to extrajudicial killings because the military may
not deliberately kill civilians, including suspected criminals, who do not pose
an imminent threat of violence.
Perhaps the administration has a legal theory that will
persuade the courts or historians.
But I look at the pictures of small boats exploding in
the Caribbean and Pacific, and I see something much simpler.
The United States and its military are using the
language of war to justify killing people accused of crimes, without arrest,
trial or any opportunity to surrender. Whatever legal theory is offered, I
believe the killings are wrong.
I am witnessing it. I am recording it. I object.
And I will vote.
