The Moon's Reproach

 Well, here I was trying to let just one day pass without writing about Trump. I thought I would write about myself and my mood instead. But then comes the New York Times to tell me that now, even more information has come to light indicating the Trump administration really did murder outright 11 people at sea. 

These were the crew—or passengers—of a boat that the White House has insisted was carrying drugs. All the evidence they have given to substantiate their claim is a half-minute-long video of their own making, which shows the boat exploding in flames. 

They are so very proud of their little snuff film—they have crowded about it, gloated over it, shared it with the world. Hegseth has bragged about how they "smoked" the boat. Trump has cackled at the thought of how various other civilians and innocents—including "fishermen," as Trump put it—will now be afraid to sail in these same waters—under penalty of random, arbitrary death from the skies. 

The schoolboyish sadism—the vulgar dancing on the corpses—puts me in mind again of nothing so much as Harold Pinter's poem about the Gulf War: "American Football."

Even if the boat was holding drugs or drug smugglers—there is no indication they posed a threat to U.S. forces. Indeed—as the Times's new reporting today reveals—the boat was trying to turn around in order to escape U.S. aircraft. Moreover, U.S. forces reportedly struck it multiple times—even after it was already disabled and drifting—ensuring that every single person on board perished in the flames. 

Suppose they were drug-runners or gang members. They were still human beings, and non-combatants. If this was a law enforcement operation, the U.S. has standard rules of engagement to arrest and interrogate people in such circumstances—without summarily executing them without charge or trial. 

Moreover—there is good reason to think they may not even have been carrying drugs at all. Some experts point out that drug-smuggling vessels try to maximize cargo space—so they would not ordinarily have 11 people on board. More likely, they said—according to earlier reporting from the Times—the boat was carrying migrants or asylum-seekers. 

Repeatedly in his first term, Trump toyed with the idea of ordering his officials to simply open fire on asylum-seekers who were attempting to cross the border. His officials always managed to put down this idea before it could be implemented, telling Trump it would be flagrantly illegal. 

But now—in his second term—Trump is surrounded by sycophants who no longer try to talk him down from such moves. And his administration has made a point of terminating key officials in the military's JAG corps—probably because they too would have told Trump that operations like their latest boat strike are a violation of the law. 

So Trump has a clear path forward now to carry out the murders he's always dreamed of. No one will tell him no.

And here I was thinking I'd write about myself instead, and my feelings. It suddenly seems so utterly trivial. 

I feel reproached just as Hardy describes, in his poem "I Looked Up From My Writing"—in which the moon looks in at his window, while he is working on a novel, asks to know what he is busy scribbling away about, when an innocent man has just been "slain in brutish battle" (Hardy was a pronounced critic of British involvement in the Boer war of the turn of the century, and probably had this conflict in mind.)

Her temper overwrought me,

   And I edged to shun her view,

For I felt assured she thought me

   One who should drown him too.