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adil haque
After Bombing Boats, Trump Tells Congress US Is in 'Armed Conflict' With Drug Cartels
"This is not stretching the envelope," said a retired judge advocate general lawyer. "This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart."
Oct 02, 2025
President Donald Trump's administration claimed that the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in a confidential notice to Congress this week intended to justify his deadly bombings of alleged smuggling boats in the Caribbean.
Democrats in Congress and legal officials have been challenging the legality of the three military strikes Trump announced last month. A woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the at least 17 people extrajudicially killed in the US bombings said her husband was a fisher.
"Congress was notified about the designation by Pentagon officials on Wednesday," according to The Associated Press, one of several outlets that obtained the notice. The New York Times reported that it "was sent to several congressional committees."
NewsNation's Kellie Meyer posted the full memo on social media:
After citing a relevant section from the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, the notice describes decades of law enforcement efforts to stem the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States as "unsuccessful," and says that cartels "illegally and directly cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American citizens each year."
"The president determined these cartels are nonstate armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States," the document continues. Trump also "determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations" and directed the US Department of Defense, which he has dubbed the Department of War, "to conduct operations against them."
"The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations," adds the memo, which notes the second strike on September 15.
Lawmakers and legal experts again challenged the administration's claim that, as the notice put it, Trump directed the bombings under "his constitutional authority as commander in chief and chief executive to conduct foreign relations."
As the Times reported:
Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army's senior adviser for law-of-war issues, said drug cartels were not engaged in "hostilities"—the standard for when there is an armed conflict for legal purposes—against the United States because selling a dangerous product is different from an armed attack.
Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities—even suspected criminals—Mr. Corn called the president's move an "abuse" that crossed a major legal line.
"This is not stretching the envelope," he said. "This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart."
New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman, who served as special counsel to the general counsel of the Defense Department during the Obama administration, said on social media that Corn was "completely right."
"Drug cartels not = 'armed conflict,'" Goodman added, stressing that the "people killed" in such strikes "are civilians."
Rutgers University law professor Adil Haque similarly pushed back on social media, saying: "The United States is not in a 'non-international armed conflict' with drug cartels. Cartels are not organized as armed groups, nor are they engaged in intense hostilities. These are dangerous criminal organizations and should be confronted using law enforcement tools."
Members of Congress also publicly weighed in, including Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), who said that "every American should be alarmed that President Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy. Drug cartels must be stopped, but declaring war and ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge—nor legal justification—is unacceptable."
At least two of the strikes have occurred off the coast of Venezuela, elevating fears of an armed conflict with the country.
"Trump's actions are illegal, unconstitutional, and dangerous," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in response to the new memo. "He is leading us willy-nilly into war with Venezuela. I have 'determined' that this is a terrible idea."
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Probe Reveals Nearly 3,000 Gaza Aid-Seekers Killed by Israeli Forces
"These repeated attacks are grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Sep 17, 2025
An investigation published this week revealed that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others over 23 months of Israel's US-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
The New Humanitarian's open-source investigation chronologically documents the killing of 2,957 Palestinian aid-seekers and the wounding of 19,866 others.
These figures include nearly 1,000 Palestinians who United Nations human rights officials say have been killed at or near aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israeli soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of civilians at GHF distribution points.
The New Humanitarian noted that these numbers represent approximately 4.6% of the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are likely a vast undercount.
“These are not isolated incidents. They're not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The New Humanitarian.
Haque and other experts interviewed for the investigation called Israeli attacks on Gaza aid-seekers "grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The New Humanitarian's investigation identified "clearly discernible patterns... showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive."
Haque said that "if Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings."
"Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” he added.
The New Humanitarian's investigation comes as Israeli forces ramp up their assault on Gaza City during Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave. Israeli leaders have publicly backed a proposal by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
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