For the past two months, the United States military — as directed by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — has been blowing up small boats in international waters near the nation of Venezuela.

Numerous experts in military and international law are reaching the seemingly unavoidable conclusion that these unprovoked and unauthorized attacks constitute outright murder, flagrant war crimes, or both.

Trump and Hegseth have “justified” these actions by claiming they are protecting Americans from illegal drugs.

That patently artificial excuse would be almost laughable if it weren’t resulting in what amounts to summary executions of dozens of potentially innocent civilians from Venezuela (and possibly other countries) and the further erosion of America’s standing in the world.

A few points to make (this list could be much longer):

• Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, each incident should have been handled as a crime, not as a pretext for Trump and Hegseth to practice siccing the United States military on whoever they want (and testing whether the military will follow even their most outrageous and potentially unlawful orders).

• Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, that is no excuse for what was reported a few days ago, which is that after the first missile strike on one of these boats back in early September, there were two survivors clinging to the wreckage who were then blown up in a shocking violation of the Pentagon’s own black-and-white proscription against killing shipwrecked enemies.

• Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, that would be merely a drop in the bucket compared to the overall amount of illicit narcotics being trafficked around the globe at any given moment.

• If Trump is so worried about illegal drugs, why did he just pardon the former president of Honduras, who had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to 45 years in prison for facilitating a years-long smuggling operation that brought over 800,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States? (By one estimate, that’s enough cocaine to get every adult in America high. 17 times.)

Some members of Congress — Democrats *and* Republicans — are calling for formal investigations into these attacks.

Join Public Citizen in a message to all members of Congress:

The American people deserve to know much more about these boat attacks, which appear to be unlawful and pretextual. Congress should immediately initiate formal investigations into whether these attacks should be happening at all along with what, if any, laws or Pentagon rules may have been violated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or anyone under his so-called leadership.

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- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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