Last week’s unprecedented strike on a sea vessel allegedly carrying drugs to American shores was celebrated by President Donald Trump, who went on to share a video of the strike on social media. Insiders revealed, however, that the video doesn’t tell the full story.
The execution-style strike was widely condemned by critics and former military officials alike as potentially being a violation of international law, and amounting to murder. Administration officials justified the strike by pointing to Trump’s executive order that designated drug cartels as terrorists, permitting the U.S. Military to neutralize such threats as an immediate threat.
Speaking with The New York Times in a report published Wednesday, however, multiple Trump administration officials said that the video shared by Trump excluded key details.
“Officials briefed on the strike said that the video does not tell the entire story,” wrote reporters Charlie Savage and Helene Cooper, who spoke with multiple administration officials under the condition of anonymity.
“It does not show the boat turning after the people aboard were apparently spooked by an aircraft above them, nor does it show the military making repeated strikes on the vessel even after disabling it, the officials said.”
International law generally prohibits extrajudicial killings, the deliberate and state-sponsored assasination of an individual or individuals, and the United States banned political assassinations in 1976 via an executive order. However, the Trump administration has argued that such strikes are permitted under both U.S. and international law due to the immediate threat posed by drug cartels, claiming such strikes to be a form of self-defense.
Former military officials, however, aren’t buying the Trump administration’s defense.
“If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” said Rear Adm. Donald Guter, speaking with the New York Times. “Where’s the ‘self-defense’? They are gone if they ever existed – which I don’t think they did.”
