President Donald Trump’s attacks on civilian ships suspected of carrying narcotics are so legally tenuous that even a former Bush administration lawyer who defended Guantanamo interrogation tactics has called them excessive.
The Trump administration has so far publicly acknowledged opening fire on two ships in international waters, resulting in the deaths of 14 people. Trump claimed the boats were operated by drug cartels trying to smuggle their cargo into the United States, but has not provided any public evidence for this and not outlined a legal theory why, even if they were, they could legally attack them.
According to Politico, even John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general under the Bush administration who put together the memos authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques," is queasy about this whole thing.
“There has to be a line between crime and war,” said John Yoo, who now teaches as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.”
“Traditionally, we’ve treated drug crimes as a criminal justice problem,” Yoo continued. “And the administration needs to make a stronger case than it’s been making so far about why the law should consider cartels to be enemies of war.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to justify the attacks by claiming that transnational drug gangs pose an "immediate threat" to U.S. national security, but legal experts have not been convinced and some observers accuse the administration of offering inconsistent and conflicting justifications.
