Asha Rangappa writes:

So far, the Trump administration has killed twenty-one people using military strikes in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, President Trump has escalated his attempt to deploy the military in cities throughout the United States, on the heels of the Secretary of Defense informing his military brass that they are no longer going to be bound by “stupid rules of engagement.” And last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi assured Trump that the United States is “going to take the same approach” the government has with drug cartels against Antifa – a group that Trump has unilaterally designated as a “major terrorist organization.”

If you are starting to connect the dots and are feeling a queasiness in your stomach, then you know where the rest of this piece is headed. Steel yourself.

Let’s start with the bombing of the drug boats. The Trump administration advanced its thin legal basis for the four military strikes to date through a “confidential notice” to Congress last week. Its argument is that 1) the targets are “designated terrorist organizations”; 2) that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with said organizations; and 3) as a result anyone who belongs to these groups are “unlawful combatants” and therefore valid military targets. If these buzzwords sound familiar to you, it’s because they are the same ones that were used in the legal justifications for targeted killings (i.e., drone strikes) in the war on terror following 9/11. However, to quote The Princess Bride, these words do not mean what the administration thinks they mean, and throwing them together into a word salad does not a legal justification make. [Continue reading…]