Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers

Cool. In a few months or weeks it will be people who criticize Trump.

By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power.

Mr. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun suspects down, except in rare circumstances where they pose an imminent threat to someone.

By contrast, in armed conflicts, troops can lawfully kill enemy combatants on sight.

But Trump doesn’t give a damn about lawfully. Trump does things Trumpully, and that’s good enough.

“It’s difficult to imagine how any lawyers inside the Pentagon could have arrived at a conclusion that this was legal rather than the very definition of murder under international law rules that the Defense Department has long accepted,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked as a Pentagon lawyer in 2015 and 2016.

…

Martin Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who helped write legal memos on counterterrorism drone strikes as a Justice Department official in the Obama administration, said that interpreting the law as allowing Mr. Trump to kill people who are not attacking the United States would require an “alarming” expansion of presidential power.

“Even if it were true they were ‘terrorists,’ the president doesn’t have authority to go around killing terrorists anywhere in the world, let alone to kill drug smugglers,” he said. “The targets of lethal force would have to either be in an armed conflict with us or otherwise be threatening a use of force that would justify self-defense.”

Whatever. He does what he wants.