Analyst blows up Trump admin’s new ‘patently illegal’ explanation for controversial move
Donald Trump’s administration has come up with a new explanation for a deadly boat strike that critics say amounts to a war crime. But according to a legal expert, that explanation completely falls apart when examined closely.
Over the weekend, legal analyst Ryan Goodman carefully broke down the Defense Department’s justification for what is known as a “double tap” strike. This was an attack in which a second strike hit people who had already survived the first explosion and were clinging to the wreckage of a boat the U.S. military claimed was carrying drugs.
Goodman pointed out that with Admiral Bradley’s lawyer set to testify before Congress this week, the most basic question hasn’t even been answered yet: how could any of these strikes be legal in the first place? He focused in particular on the September 2 strike and questioned whether the military followed its own rules, known as the Collateral Damage Estimation Methodology, a formal process used to assess civilian harm before launching attacks.
According to Goodman, this methodology is central to the Defense Department’s latest claim. The new argument from the Pentagon is that the second strike was not aimed at people in the water, but at possible cocaine floating among the wreckage. Goodman said this claim makes no sense under the rules the military itself is supposed to follow.
He explained that the laws of war require the military to weigh expected civilian deaths against the military advantage gained from an attack. In this case, the supposed “advantage” would have been destroying drugs. But the same rules clearly define noncombatants to include shipwrecked people, meaning survivors in the water are legally protected.
Goodman said he sees no way the strike could have complied with these standards. Even if the military claims it was targeting drugs and not people, the presence of shipwrecked survivors should have made the strike illegal under established military law. Hitting the area anyway would directly violate the very methodology the Defense Department says it uses for planned lethal operations.
In short, Goodman concluded that the administration’s new explanation simply does not hold up. It fails legal scrutiny and raises serious questions about whether the military followed any lawful process at all before launching the attack.
Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu echoed Goodman’s concerns and shared his analysis publicly. Lieu said the most basic issue is whether there was ever any legal justification to strike a boat that was moving away from the United States and allegedly transporting drugs to places like Suriname and Europe.
Together, their comments suggest that the administration’s defense of the strike is not only weak, but potentially exposes serious violations of international law that Congress may now be forced to confront.
