THANK YOU WELLS!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/opinion/trump-obama-drone-strikes-illegal.html
To the Editor:
Jeh C. Johnson’s condemnation of the Trump administration’s
recent strikes on boats in the Caribbean appears to be either ironic or lacking
in self-awareness.
While Mr. Johnson argues that Congress gave “implicit”
authorization for the Obama administration’s targeted killings in Afghanistan,
Yemen and Somalia — a claim many national security lawyers like me strongly
disagree with — it is undeniable that this policy opened the door to what is
playing out now off the coast of Latin America.
For the nearly quarter-century since the attacks of Sept. 11,
the public has been primed and conditioned by a “global war on terror” to
accept war without end or geographic limitation. The incineration of human
beings outside areas of active hostilities, who have not been identified or
tied to specific threats, let alone tried or convicted of crimes, has been
normalized.
Secret legal opinions conjured by creative executive branch
lawyers have twisted both domestic and international law beyond its breaking
point in order to authorize torture and warrantless surveillance, and to make
murder and assassination legal so long as, the public is told, the victims were
bad guys who posed a threat to the United States.
Let’s be clear: Drug traffickers are not terrorists or
combatants, the United States is not at war with any country in Latin America
and the extrajudicial killing of civilians is always murder. Mr. Johnson is
correct to condemn President Trump’s strikes, but his attempt to distinguish
and exculpate himself and his Obama administration colleagues rings hollow.
J. Wells Dixon
New York
The writer is a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional
Rights.
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