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Since the beginning of September, the Trump administration has authorized at least 10 lethal attacks on suspected drug-carrying boats, killing at least 43 people. It claims the strikes are legal because it has notified Congress that the country is engaged in a "non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels it has classified as foreign terrorist organizations. But its argument remains threadbare, and it has failed to release or provide to Congress an opinion from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that it claims lays out the legal justification for the killings.

What the US military is doing to alleged drug boats in waters off South America is the nautical equivalent of police officers gunning down drug mules. Police officers who do not arrest and charge drug suspects but instead gun them down in cold blood would face murder charges. US military personnel engaged in the planning and execution of the fatal attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, potentially face similar liability under both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the federal criminal code.

Still, President Trump has been blunt about his intentions and about his disdain for Congress's role in approving US military actions: "I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war," he told reporters on Thursday. "I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country."

Vice-President Vance was equally blunt as he shared his sneering contempt for the rule of law, especially international law, in an exchange on X with social media personality Brian Krassenstein. Vance had posted: "Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military."

Krassenstein responded: "Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime."

To which Vance retorted: "I don't give a shit what you call it."

But many legal experts see war crimes and other violations of international and US domestic law in the attacks on civilian vessels on the high seas.

"There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea," said Adam Isacson, the Washington Office on Latin America's director of defense oversight.

And using lethal force against civilians on the high seas "is a war crime if not in self-defense," he added. "'Not yielding to pursuers' or 'suspected of carrying drugs' doesn't carry a death sentence."

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), accused the administration of leaving Congress uninformed about the strikes and said it "offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence" to support the action. "Every American should be alarmed that their president has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy," Reed said in a statement.

"This action is legally questionable under both US and international law," said Juan S. Gonzalez, a former National Security Council official under Joe Biden. "As it stands, the administration is claiming authority to sink any vessel it 'deems' tied to drug trafficking. That's a slippery slope," he said. "Without checks, the US risks killing fishermen, migrants, or other civilians… and we'd just have to take the [administration] at its word."

And former Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel attorney Marty Ledermann wrote that there is no legal basis for the president to claim the right to kill people anywhere in the world who might -- in the president's view -- be planning to commit crimes, especially when less lethal options -- such as interdicting and arresting such people -- are available. "That's why there is virtually no historical precedent of any president ordering lethal force in a situation such as this," he noted.

Ledermann also pointed out that the strikes violate the US ban on assassination except when engaged in armed conflict or as a legitimate act of self-defense to stop an armed attack. And they violate Title 18 of the US Code, which makes murder a felony offense. Defined as "the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought," the statute and its associated conspiracy to commit murder statute do not apply if Congress has approved armed conflict and it has been conducted in conformance to the laws of armed conflict. "But that's not the case here," Ledermann notes.

Writing in Just Security, a policy journal of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate Daniel Maurer underlined the sorts of criminal liability servicemembers could face for participating in unlawful lethal strikes on civilians.

"Despite the clear absence of an 'imminent threat of death or serious injury' or 'grave threat to life, the US Coast Guard did not interdict the alleged criminal narcotrafficking in the way this conduct has been historically (and recently) approached," Maurer wrote.

"These suspected criminals were not arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced through a regular course of criminal procedure and neutral adjudication in a court. They were killed extrajudicially for conduct that could not be plausibly labeled a military attack, use of force, or even threat of imminent harm to anyone in the United States or any other nation, and despite the opportunity and ability to use less-than-lethal force to stop the boats. An extrajudicial killing, premeditated and without justification or excuse and without the legal authority tied to an armed conflict, is properly called "murder." And murder is still a crime for those in uniform who executed the strike even if their targets are dangerous criminals, and even if servicemembers were commanded to do so by their superiors, including the President of the United States," Maurer argued.

Service members involved in planning and executing the strikes could find themselves subject to Article 118 of the UCMJ, which defines the crime of murder. That statute can be applied to "Any person subject to this chapter who, without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when such person -- (1) has a premeditated design to kill; [or] (2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm."

That includes any servicemember who "aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures" the commission of the unlawful act.

As Maurer details, "This definition would naturally include the person who 'pulled the trigger' in the Caribbean boat attacks: the officers piloting the drones and firing the missiles. But the officers' immediate supervisors, who presumably authorized the kill shot, would also be liable as a principal for 'commanding it.' But that supervisor took orders from a higher commander as well, so -- theoretically -- every officer in the chain of command who received, tailored, added specificity to, and directed downward the initial order from the President or Secretary of Defense: all would likely fall within the meaning of traditional accomplice liability, and under the UCMJ may be charged as a principal for violating Article 118. So too would many of the staff planners responsible for "facilitating the strike": everyone from the logisticians (and their supervisors) to intelligence analysts (and their supervisors), to the team that wrote and published the operation order (and their supervisors) -- everyone who played a role in determining precisely where and when to strike, what airborne platform to use, and what weapon system to employ."

The UCMJ's definition of "aiding and abetting" is the same as found in the federal criminal code: 18 U.S.C. § 2.

Maurer also points out that since servicemembers have an affirmative duty to comply with the principles of armed conflict, they could also be charged with a slew of lesser offenses for involvement in unlawful actions, including "dereliction of duty" (Article 92(3); "reckless endangerment" (Article 114); or aggravated assault or "assault with intent to commit [another] specified offense" (e.g., murder) (Article 128).

"As with murder, each participant on the relevant staffs and their commanders may be liable for these offenses as aiders and abettors or as co-conspirators," he notes.

Maurer also notes that the Justice Department can exercise concurrent jurisdiction over active-duty servicemembers, meaning it could charge them with crimes under the federal criminal code, including 18 U.S.C. § 1111, the federal murder statute, as well as aiding and abetting and other lesser offenses.

Because federal law prohibits double jeopardy, servicemembers could not be prosecuted under both the UCMJ and federal criminal statutes, "so it would have to be one or the other," Maurer notes.

The likelihood that any servicemembers would be prosecuted for their involvement in the killings of those impoverished South American fishermen -- not Osama bin Laden in a speedboat -- is low under the current administration. But they may well someday face a day of reckoning. That is something for currently serving servicemembers to ponder. It could also be why US Southern Command commander Adm. Alvin Holsey is stepping down at the end of the year, two years ahead of schedule. He reportedly questioned the legality or ethics of the attacks, and now he is getting out.