The Name of Murderer

 The Trump administration's strike this week on a Venezuelan vessel was a blatant violation of international law. Indeed, it was probably no less than murder—under the U.S. military's own formal definition of the concept. 

Even if we take the administration at their word that the vessel was carrying drugs—or that, at least, the U.S. forces that fired on it had probable cause to believe it was—there is still no indication that they needed to destroy the boat and its 11-member crew. 

If this was a law enforcement operation—then the people on the boat were criminal suspects; and their killing on the high seas was a case of extrajudicial execution. A fundamental violation of the human right to life. 

If, on the contrary, this was an act of war—then the laws of war would apply—as the New York Times yesterday explained. But that would make the people on the boat civilians—whom you also can't deliberately target in war absent proportionality or military necessity. 

And all of that is assuming—once again—that the people on this boat were actually drug smugglers. But now—we have good reason to think that's not actually the case. 

According to one expert quoted in the New York Times, the people on the boat were more probably migrants and asylum-seekers—since it would be highly unusual for a boat of that size to devote so much space to carrying 11 crew members rather than cargo—if it really was transporting drugs. 

So—the U.S. may not only have violated the laws or war or its own military's prohibition against murder. It may have done so against people who weren't even trying to smuggle drugs into the country—but were merely trying to escape persecution in Venezuela, or seek work—in short, to survive. 

None of this is normal. Simply blowing up boats is not in fact how the U.S. has operated in the past. Since the strike, numerous former officials have spoken to news outlets to confirm that they had an established protocol to give criminal suspects a chance to surrender and to try them in courts of law. 

"Everything is done to preserve life," as one of the former officials told the Wall Street Journal. 

Seemingly none of that was done here. The administration doesn't even want us to think this was done fairly, or with adequate cause, or with proportionality, or with military necessity, or with due process. They like to crow about how they just "blew it up"—out of nowhere. 

The strike would hardly work so well for state terrorism purposes if people thought the Trump administration actually went about this sort of thing fairly and lawfully. They don't want that. They want to terrorize people with the threat of random, arbitrary, lawless butchery. 

What is one to do with that? We can call this strike murder—and it was. But what difference does that make when we're dealing with an administration that revels in murder—that likes to be thought of as murderers? 

They "want the name of it"—as Theodore Parker once wrote, of the people who kidnapped Thomas Simms and returned him to slavery. This administration "wants the name" of murderer. They want the brand of Cain on their forehead. 

And "verily," as Parker puts it elsewhere—"they shall have their reward."

"Rubio Says U.S. Will Work With Other Nations to ‘Blow Up’ Crime Groups"—read a dispiriting Times headline yesterday. Yes, Rubio really has been using the phrase "blow up" to describe the administration's approach. They like the idea that they can just "blow things up."

Here was Trump—writing shortly after the reported strike: ""Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!" 

The combination of boyish bravado, puerile stupidity, and sadistic cruelty is typical of this entire administration's tone. It would take a Harold Pinter to do justice to this disgusting spectacle of grown men crowing over the corpses produced by their own violent lusts. 

After the first Gulf War, Pinter wrote a poem called "American Football"—mocking the bullying sadism and repugnant self-conceit with which U.S. officials celebrated the overwhelming force they had just used to pummel a weaker country into the dirt. 

And when a weak, sniveling little bully like Rubio hides behind the might of the U.S. military, to crow with schoolboyish glee about how—merely because we are a big, strong country, we get to "blow up" any boat, in any waters, anywhere in the world, whenever we want to—

—or when the President of the United States uses 11 exclamation marks in a social media post to crow about how he just murdered 11 people on the high seas without charge or trial or necessity—

Pinter's satire hardly seems overstated: 

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

[...]

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.