Right now, Donald Trump is killing civilian non-combatants outside of the borders of this country without providing the Congress or anyone else any justification for what he is doing beyond his powers as President.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
That’s a front-page headline from today’s New York Times. Trump is already using armed drones and rockets to kill people in boats on the open sea. He came up with a lame allegation that the people in the boats are terrorists smuggling drugs to “attack” the United States. He claimed that his powers as Commander in Chief under the Constitution make the killings legal. But everybody knows he did it just because he can.
My question is, why is he even bothering to ask for legislation that will allow him to commit murder when he’s already doing it?
The Times describes the draft for the suggested legislation as a “broadly worded proposal, which would legally authorize the president to kill people he deems narco-terrorists and attack countries he says helped them.”
Critics of the three attacks on alleged drug boats, which have killed a total of 17, say the military operations violate the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires that if “Armed Forces of the United States are introduced in hostilities,” the use of military force “shall be” reported to the Congress within 48 hours “together with a full account of the circumstances under which such hostilities were initiated, the estimated scope and duration of such hostilities, and the constitutional and legislative authority under which the introduction of hostilities took place.”
There has been no such report to the Congress. In its place, Trump has beaten his chest on Truth Social and in comments to the press, threatening Venezuela and its president that more attacks will happen if they keep sending drug boats to “attack this country.” He has also moved a naval armada into the waters off Venezuela and dispatched a squadron of F-35 fighters to Puerto Rico that are said to be in preparation for more military action against “drug terrorists.”
Trump’s model is clearly President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who during his eight-year reign in office, oversaw the non-judicial killing of somewhere between 12,000 and 30,000 alleged drug suspects, according to various human rights groups that tried to keep track of the vicious carnage unleashed by Duterte. He urged the police at all levels of Philippine society to shoot drug users and dealers on sight and assured them that if they were charged with criminal offenses for the killings, he would pardon them. Early on in what he called his “anti-drug campaign,” Duterte openly compared himself to Hitler.
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Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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