Trump and Hegseth Face New War Crime Allegation Over Drug Boat Strikes
A potential fresh new war crime has come out of President Trump’s lethal double-strike boat bombing in the Caribbean Sea: perfidy.
The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration used an aircraft disguised as a passenger plane to extrajudicially kill 11 people in September, claiming that they were trafficking drugs.
The administration has maintained that these bombings are completely legal because the country is at war with this ambiguous group of cartels in the region. If we take this to be true, then the decision to use a civilian-disguised plane to carry out those acts is a war crime known as “perfidy”—using deception to convince the target that they’re safe.
“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper told the Times. “If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”
Officials who saw video footage of the boat strike say the plane swooped low enough for people on the boat to see it.
The Trump administration remains steadfast in its denial of any wrongdoing, stating that “the strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”
The United States has killed at least 123 people in 35 strikes since this bombing campaign began last year.