WP: The Trump administration ramps up its lawlessness on the seas

When the U.S. armed forces began blowing up suspected “drug boats” on Sept. 2, 2025, it was widely seen as a way not just to fight the war on drugs but also to put pressure on Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who was in league with drug traffickers. Many expected that the lawless strikes — which amount to killing suspected criminals without trial — would end after U.S. forces captured Maduro at the beginning of the year.

There was, indeed, a pause in such operations. After conducting the 34th and 35th boat strikes on Dec. 31, the military did not carry out another one until Jan. 23. In all, according to the Just Security website, there have been at least 55 strikes, with 174 reported killed, 11 missing and four known survivors, ‘The Washington Post’ writes.

It has now become routine for U.S. Southern Command to post grainy videos online of boats being blown up, along with claims that “male narco-terrorists were killed,” even though the administration has not offered any evidence that even one of the people incinerated by U.S. firepower was engaged in drug trafficking, much less in terrorism. The administration is so averse to trying to prove wrongdoing in court that, when suspects survive a strike, they are released rather than arrested. Apparently, there is a secret Justice Department opinion justifying the strikes based on the fanciful premise that drug cartels are waging war on the United States.

But there is also a greater willingness by the U.S. armed forces to engage in illegal conduct. Echoing the view of many legal experts, Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser, told me, “These boat strikes — premeditated killings outside of armed conflict — implicate U.S. criminal laws prohibiting murder on the high seas, conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States, and murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” Even many conservative legal scholars agree that, as John Yoo wrote in The Post in September, the boat strikes “violate American law and the Constitution.”

Another mystery: What exactly is being accomplished by the strikes other than satisfying President Donald Trump’s bloodlust? Trump recently boasted on Truth Social that “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!” That figure is about as reliable as his claims that prescription drug prices have fallen by more than 100 percent, which is mathematically impossible.

No one knows how many illicit drugs are being smuggled into the U.S. — drug traffickers don’t file customs declarations — and it’s likely that, if there is any fall in maritime trafficking, it simply shifts to land routes. For what it’s worth, drug seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have increased over the past year, from 50,912 pounds in March 2025 to 65,457 pounds this March. That could be a sign of better enforcement or of more drug smuggling. Either way, it isn’t directly related to the boat strikes, which don’t result in drug seizures.

So we are left with the disturbing spectacle of the U.S. military continuing to carry out orders that outside experts (if not the administration’s own lawyers) say are blatantly unlawful. If Trump’s handpicked generals are willing to act so egregiously in this instance, what else might they do in the future?

... The author of this article "forgot" to mention a very important fact: the United States is engaged in real piracy not only in the ocean waters near its own coast, but also far from the United States — off the coast of Iran.

Recently, President Donald Trump himself said the U.S. Navy was acting "like pirates" in carrying out Washington's naval blockade of Iranian ports during the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran.

This addition illustrates the whole picture: the United States is turning into corsairs on the seas and in international waters, whose goal is robbery and murder.

Trump himself admitted this!

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