Second Strike Scrutiny Obscures Larger Question About Trump’s Boat Attacks

⚖️ Second Strike Scrutiny Obscures Larger Question About Trump’s Boat Attacks

Congress is focusing on two deaths in one strike. But nine other people died in that same attack, and the United States has killed 87 in all. Were any of those killings legal?

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> By Charlie Savage and Julian E. Barnes

> Reporting from Washington

> Dec. 4, 2025 Updated 10:40 p.m. ET

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As Congress parses the details of a follow-on strike that killed shipwrecked survivors of President Trump’s first boat attack on Sept. 2, a much larger issue risks getting lost: whether Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have caused the military to commit crimes in a score of attacks.

Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the Sept. 2 operation, on Thursday showed lawmakers a video of the attack. The briefing was part of a congressional effort to understand his decision to order a second strike and determine whether the survivors of the first one remained “in the fight” or were technically shipwrecked, making it a war crime to kill them.

There have been shifting narratives emerging from the Pentagon, each resetting the analysis. But all of the scenarios consist of analogizing the actions of suspected drug runners to traditional combat activities. The comparisons are strained at best, legal experts say, because the laws of war were not written for and do not fit a drug smuggling situation.

“Debate over when a shipwrecked crew member loses protection is a classic legal-of-war question,” said Dr. Martha Chen, a professor of International Law at Columbia University. “But that question is a distraction when the initial attack, which killed nine people, is the real legal crisis. You can’t legally execute a civilian and then worry about the rules of engagement for their funeral.”

The Scope of the Problem

The Sept. 2 incident, which resulted in 11 deaths, is not an isolated event. Over the past six months, under a directive issued by the Trump administration to adopt a “zero-tolerance, maximum-force” posture against maritime drug smugglers, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have engaged in at least 20 kinetic actions in international waters. These operations have cumulatively resulted in the confirmed deaths of 87 individuals.

The administration’s stated justification for the increased use of lethal force rests on two main pillars: classifying certain smuggling routes as “Hostile Economic War Zones” and treating high-speed smuggling vessels as “enemy combatant craft.” Legal observers argue these classifications are entirely novel and lack a foundation in international or domestic law.

The core legal question is simple: Do drug smugglers engaged in transnational crime qualify as combatants under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC)?

Legal precedent, established by decades of counter-narcotics operations, has always treated maritime interdiction as a law enforcement activity, not an act of war. Suspects are to be apprehended, their vessels seized, and the individuals prosecuted. Deadly force is permitted only in the context of self-defense against an immediate threat to the lives of law enforcement personnel.

“The White House is attempting to retrofit the Laws of War onto a law enforcement framework,” argued former Navy Judge Advocate General, Rear Adm. (ret.) Dale Hix. “It’s a dangerous political move that shields commanders from accountability under domestic criminal law, but it absolutely fails the test of international humanitarian law.”

Analogy and Evasion

The military’s defense of the Sept. 2 strike, as detailed in internal Pentagon memos obtained by this newspaper, hinges on the argument that the smugglers, having first attempted to ram the U.S. vessel, had initiated hostilities, effectively transforming the encounter into an armed conflict. This reasoning attempts to trigger Article 41 of the Geneva Conventions, which governs the protection of persons involved in combat.

Yet, this analogy breaks down quickly. The initial target was a civilian vessel suspected of criminal activity, not a military target. Furthermore, LOAC applies primarily to conflicts between states or between a state and an organized armed group (like a terrorist organization) whose primary purpose is military action against the state.

“The crew of a cocaine-laden speedboat is a criminal enterprise, not an organized armed group,” said Professor Chen. “They are armed to protect their product and avoid arrest, not to wage war on the United States. To suggest otherwise is a cynical legal fiction.”

If the LOAC does not apply, then the entire operation falls under peacetime rules of engagement and the legal jurisdiction of the United States Code and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Under these rules, the killing of the 87 individuals in a non-self-defense situation would be prima facie illegal, potentially constituting murder or, at the least, manslaughter under the UCMJ.

The congressional focus on the two individuals killed in the second strike—the so-called “shipwrecked” survivors—is a tactical error that plays into the administration’s hands. By focusing on the minutiae of the second strike, Congress implicitly accepts the legality of the first strike, which killed the vast majority of the victims.

“The debate about a ‘shipwrecked’ person is a red herring,” said an aide to Senator Dianne Foye, who has called for a full-scale select committee investigation. “The real question is: Why did we fire the first missile? The White House has successfully diverted scrutiny from the 87 deaths that occurred legally, according to their warped view, to the two deaths that are ambiguous even by their own standards.”

The danger is that if Congress only condemns the second strike—the one against the survivors—it may inadvertently legitimize the broader policy of using lethal force against suspected criminals at sea. This would set a perilous precedent, institutionalizing the transformation of law enforcement into war, and further blurring the already complicated lines of international law. The fate of the 87, and the legal integrity of the U.S. military, hangs in the balance.