December 16, 2025
There have now been 22 "lethal, kinetic strikes" by the U.S. military against "narco-terrorists" in international waters who were supposedly transporting drugs to the United States. It recently came to light that the opening salvo of these strikes, on September 2, resulted in two survivors who were killed with a double-tap strike.
Many on the Left, and some on the Right, have denounced the second strike as a war crime, and called for the firing of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) described footage of the September 2 strike as "one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service." "You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel were killed by the United States," Himes added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) commented: "You don't have to have served in the military to understand that that was a violation of ethical, moral and legal code."
Even the War Street Journal weighed in:
The charge of deliberately killing the defenseless is serious enough to warrant a close look from Congress. Our view is that the Commander in Chief deserves legal latitude as part of his constitutional war powers. But that doesn't extend to shooting the wounded in violation of U.S. and international rules of war. The Pentagon's own law of war manual prohibits "hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors." Such excesses will also turn the public against allowing a President the power he may someday need to defend the country's interests quickly.
Because I often write about war, the U.S. military, and U.S. foreign policy, I have been asked my opinion about the double-tap strike.
Single tap, double tap: What's the difference?
The uproar over the order given, supposedly, by Admiral Frank Bradley to kill the survivors of the September 2 boat strike masks the real issue: The first boat strike was an illegitimate, illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, unnecessary, and foolish act of extrajudicial murder.
Most of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who are upset about the second strike that killed the two men care not a whit about the men killed in the first strike. Why has no one shed a tear for the men that were killed during the first strike on the boat ? What about their families?
Neither the boat nor the men on it posed any threat to the United States. Not a single American had to go to bed worrying about any boat in the ocean off the coast of Venezuela. There were no terrorists. There was no boat near American territory. There was no search of the boat. There was no congressional authorization to use military force. Fentanyl-supposedly the scourge of America that results in the most drug overdoses-usually comes into the country through border crossings; the boat was supposedly carrying cocaine. There was no conviction of a crime. And there wasn't even a crime committed. No one who loads a boat with anything who is 1,500 miles from the United States can possibly violate any American law.
When Admiral Bradley defended his actions before members of Congress, he told lawmakers that he "weighed the fate of the survivors with the understanding that the Trump administration has argued illicit drugs are weapons responsible for killing Americans, and that those who traffic them are not criminals but enemy combatants." Bradley maintained that U.S. intelligence "showed that everyone on the boat was a 'narco-terrorist,' consistent with the administration's definition, which allowed for deadly force."
This is ludicrous. Even if the boat was loaded bow to stern with drugs, there was no crime at all. It would simply mean that the boat crews were entrepreneurs bringing products to the United States that Americans want. If illicit drugs are weapons, then Americans are killing themselves. And not just with illicit drugs. According to the American Public Health Association ( APHA), "Across the United States, 40 people die each day because of overdosing on narcotic prescription medications." There is a reason why the United States has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the world: Americans want to take drugs. And if they want to take drugs, who are you or I to stop them?
Regime change in Venezuela is on the horizon. Blaming Venezuela for America's drug problem is just a ruse. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves. Trump's seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela is just the beginning.