No President Should Have This Kind of Power. NYT

'Somewhere mingled in the foam and debris of the Caribbean Sea are the remains of at least 17 people who were killed this month by U.S. military forces on the orders of President Trump. They were aboard three speedboats that the Trump administration said were carrying drugs and smugglers from Venezuela.

Perhaps they were. Yet the administration has produced no evidence for its claims. And even if the allegations are correct, blowing up the boats is a lawless exercise in the use of deadly force.

On social media, Mr. Trump assured the public that the passengers were not only drug traffickers but also “narcoterrorists” and members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which he said was under the control of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. Military force was justified as a form of self-defense, he said, because the cartels are “threatening our national security,” and his top aides have vowed to continue the strikes. The self-defense justification looks especially weak after The Times reported that the first of the three boats turned away from the United States before being destroyed.

With these attacks, Mr. Trump has ordered the summary execution of people who are not at war with the United States in any traditional sense of the term and who may not even have been committing the crime of which he accused them. It is a violation of legal due process that should alarm all Americans. It is even more extreme than his policy of sending migrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, based on questionable claims that they belonged to Tren de Aragua and without any chance to contest the government’s claims. The United States, created in opposition to monarchy, should never become a country where the president can order the indefinite imprisonment or the unilateral killing of people merely because he has deemed them to be criminals. . .

Mr. Trump has always preferred incendiary, and often ineffective, displays of power to quiet, steady programs that work. His attacks at sea fit a disturbing pattern of using the military to address law-enforcement problems. Just as he continues to send the National Guard into cities in a supposed effort to reduce street crime, he wants to achieve the illusion of dominance over drug smuggling, even if his actions make little difference and even if he kills people, guilty or innocent, in the process. The price is a growing number of bodies of nameless foreign citizens who can never defend themselves. It is a moral stain on our nation.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/trump-caribbean-sea-boats-military.html