When President Donald Trump first announced that he had ordered the Pentagon to attack fishing boats and speedboats on the high seas which he said carried dangerous drugs destined for willing buyers in the United States, many of us who monitor the government for its indifference to the Constitution perceived it as truly criminal and utterly scandalous.
The military commits murder when it intentionally kills a civilian non-combatant who poses no immediate threat to the U.S. or to military personnel. The crime is committed by all personnel in the chain of command who knowingly participate in these attacks.
The order to kill civilian non-combatants is an unlawful order which the military personnel who receive it have a legal and moral duty to challenge and either decline to carry out or resign from the military.
It was scandalous because the president and his secretary of defense boasted about it......
.....This criminal indifference to human life transgresses the natural law, the Constitution and federal statutes. But it is worse than that. It reveals a deep-seated nihilism animating the Trump administration. Nihilism rejects all standards of human behavior, recognizes no restraints on the exercise of power and accepts no universal concepts of right and wrong.
The price for this nihilism abroad is a government at home that fails to protect the rights of persons, operates without transparency and respects no laws. Who voted for this?