Mike Johnson Defends Murder of Shipwrecked Sailors as 'Entirely Appropriate'
"There can be no war crime if there is no war," said one human rights scholar this week. "But there can still be murder, which these attacks were."
What human rights experts and scholars of international law have described as nothing short of calculated and cold-blooded "murder," Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday claimed was "entirely appropriate"—the extrajudicial killing of two shipwrecked sailors clinging to the side of their exploded boat after it was bombed in the middle of the Caribbean Sea by the US military.
The murder of the two men on Sept 2., which followed approximately 45 minutes after all the others on the boat were already killed in an initial strike that shattered the boat in a ball of fire, has become the center of controversy in terms of the legality of such attacks on nearly two dozen boats that have left at least 87 people dead over recent months.
Following a Thursday briefing, Johnson emerged to say that we was convinced the killings were justified despite the chorus of expert voices who have said—even if you accept the Trump administration's dubious claims about the justifications and authority to eviscerate alleged drug boats and everyone on board them with no due process—that killing people so clearly defenseless and unable to harm anyone, let alone the United States, would be a textbook war crime in the context of war and a murder on the high seas in the context of international maritime law.
In his remarks, Johnson said the killings of the two men was "entirely appropriate," though he has not yet called for the full video of the killing to be released, unlike others among the small handful of lawmakers who have seen it.
"They were able-bodied, they were not injured," Johnson said of the two victims, "and they were attempting to recover the contents of the boat, which was full of narcotics."
"The individuals on that vessel were not helpless castaways," he added. "They were drug runners on a capsized drug boat, and by all indications, attempting to recover it so they could continue pushing drugs to kill Americans."
According to experts, however, the claim—which numerous Republicans and high-ranking Trump officials have now made—that two men who have just survived a massive missile strike on their boat, clinging to life on bits of debris in the middle of the ocean were in the act of "pushing drugs to kill Americans," defies belief.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, argued this week in The Guardian that such claims must be resolutely countered and these 87 killings at sea—ordered by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—condemned for what they are: murder.
"The Pentagon has also fallen back on the claim that the two were trying to right the remains of the boat that might have still contained cocaine," wrote Roth. "But the stricken boat was clearly going nowhere and could easily have been intercepted. There was no need to kill the two men clinging to its wreckage."
"In an armed conflict, it is a war crime to attack people who have been shipwrecked at sea, as some in Congress have alleged happened. They are considered hors de combat—outside the fight—and hence no longer combatants who can be shot on sight. They are akin to wounded or surrendering combatants. Opposing forces have a duty to receive and care for them, not kill them."
Going beyond the "war crime" narrative, Roth echoes in his column what many other rights experts have said, that there can be no "war crimes," in fact, when there is no declared armed conflict that constitutes a war.
"There can be no war crime if there is no war," argues Roth. "But there can still be murder, which these attacks were. So were every one of the other killings at sea that Trump and Hegseth have ordered."
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which earlier this week filed a lawsuit demanding release of the internal Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo justifying the killings, accused the administration of warping the law beyond recognition in defense of what people should recognize as a murder spree, not legal military operations.
“The Trump administration is displacing the fundamental mandates of international law with the phony wartime rhetoric of a basic autocrat,” Azmy said. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up legalese in order to provide cover for the obvious illegality of these serial homicides, the public needs to see this analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”
