The peremptory strike on a speedboat is a warning to all who serve. Remember your oath.
September 8, 2025
The United States has crossed a dangerous line.
Last week, an American military platform destroyed a small
vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people the Trump administration claims were drug traffickers. It was not an
interception. It was not a boarding with Coast Guard legal authority. It was a
strike—ordered from Washington, executed in international waters, and justified
with little more than “trust us.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox that officials “knew exactly who was in that
boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” He offered no evidence.
This was not a counterdrug operation. It was not law
enforcement. It was killing without process. And it was, to all appearances,
against the letter and the spirit of the law.
For decades, the U.S. military and Coast Guard have
intercepted drug shipments in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific under a careful legal framework: Coast Guard officers would
tactically control Navy ships, invoke law enforcement authority, stop vessels,
and detain crews for prosecution. The goal is not execution; it is interdiction
within international law.
This week’s strike ripped up that framework. The people on
board were not given the chance to surrender. No evidence was presented. No
rules of engagement were cited. The administration claimed authority to kill on suspicion alone.
International law does not permit such action. A vessel in international
waters is not a lawful target simply because officials say so. Contending that
narcotics pose a long-term danger to Americans is at best a weak policy
argument, not a legal justification for force. Unless this boat posed an imminent
threat of attack—which no one has claimed—blowing it out of the water is not
self-defense. It is killing at sea. A government that ignores these
distinctions is not fighting cartels. It is discarding the rule of law.
Beyond the gross violations of the law and the Constitution
lies an enormous strategic danger. By redefining traffickers as legitimate
military targets, the administration has plunged the United States into another
war without limits.
Who is the enemy? “Cartels,” we are told. But cartels are not armies. They are
networks that span countries and blend with civilians. Declaring war on them is
like declaring war on poverty or terrorism—a plunge into an endless campaign
that cannot be “won.”
Where is the battlefield? The Caribbean? Venezuela? Central
America? Overnight, officials shifted their story about the destroyed vessel’s
destination: first, it was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in
the Caribbean,” then it was among “imminent threats to the United States.” If geography is
that malleable, there is no limit to where the next strike may fall.
And what is the objective? To “blow up and get rid of them,” in the words of Secretary of
State Marco Rubio. That is not strategy; it is bravado. We have tried it
before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen. Killing “high-value targets” didn’t end
the war on terror.
The U.S. is drifting into an undeclared war of assassination
across half a hemisphere, led by unaccountable officials who equate explosions
with effectiveness.
Even more dangerous is the backdrop: the Supreme
Court’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for
“official acts.” Experts warned this would give the commander-in-chief license
to commit murder. The majority waved those fears away. Now the president has ordered
killings in international waters.
Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat.
The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will
face no consequences.
This is no longer abstract. The law has been rewritten in
real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not
strength. That is authoritarianism.
What does this mean for the principle of civilian control,
when those who wield it face no consequence for abuse? What does it mean for
our military, when they are ordered to carry out missions that violate the
standards they have sworn to uphold?
What happens abroad does not stay abroad. A government that
stretches legal authority overseas will not hesitate to do the same at home.
The same commander-in-chief who ordered a strike on a boat in international
waters has already ordered National Guard troops into American cities over
the objections of local leaders. The logic is identical:
redefine the threat, erase legal distinctions, and justify force as the first
tool. Today it is “traffickers” in the Caribbean. Tomorrow it will be
“criminals” in Chicago or “radicals” in Atlanta.
This strike is not only about 11 lives lost at sea. It is
about the precedent set when the military is unmoored from law, and when
silence from senior leaders normalizes the abuse.
The cost will not be measured in a destroyed boat. It will
be measured in the corrosion of law, strategy, and trust. Legally, the U.S. has
abandoned the framework that distinguished interdiction from assassination.
Constitutionally, presidential immunity has been laid bare: the
commander-in-chief of the most destructive military power in history has been
placed beyond the reach of law. Strategically, we have entered another endless
war against a concept, not an enemy. Internally, the erosion of boundaries abroad
feeds the erosion of boundaries at home.
The laws of war, the principles of proportionality, the
training drilled into every officer—all run counter to what happened in the
Caribbean. Yet silence has prevailed. And silence is acquiescence. Each
concession ratifies the misuse of force until it becomes routine. That is how
institutions corrode. That is how democracies die.
The strike in the Caribbean is not the action of a strong
nation. It is a warning. This is about whether the U.S. military remains an
institution of law and principle, or whether it becomes an obedient weapon in
the hands of a lawless president.
A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to
wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit is a republic in
deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The courts will not stop it. That leaves
those sworn not to a man, but to the Constitution.
The oath is clear: unlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must
be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It
is betrayal.
Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. His active duty
career included command at sea and national security roles. He writes about
leadership and democracy.
