The Guessing Game of Trump’s Air Strikes

The purge of the Pentagon press means that the recent military action on Caribbean and Pacific boats remains underexamined. 

“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, okay? We’re gonna kill them. They’re gonna be, like, dead.” Those were the words of President Donald Trump on October 23, speaking at a White House roundtable about the administration’s military campaign against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Over the past three months, the US military’s Southern Command has hit at least twenty-one vessels with air strikes and killed at least eighty-three people. The administration alleges, without providing evidence, that these boats were trafficking drugs to the US.

Last week, the Washington Post reported new information about the verbal directive given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during the first attack, on September 2. “The order was to kill everybody,” an insider told the paper. (Hegseth said the story was “fake news.”) According to the Post report, commanders were tracking a boat holding eleven people that they suspected of carrying narcotics. They launched a missile, “igniting a blaze from bow to stern.” When the smoke cleared, commanders saw that “two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.” To comply with Hegseth’s direction, they launched a second missile. No one survived.