The Military Wasn't Built to Fight Crime

"The grainy clip, only 30 seconds long and taken from a U.S. aircraft, shows a small boat skipping across the waves, bracketed by crosshairs. The crosshairs move in closer. Seconds later, a missile explodes, engulfing the boat in fire and destroying everything and everyone on board. That missile, Trump said, killed 11 "narco-terrorists" on an illicit smuggling mission that threatened American lives."

"In the near-quarter-century since the 9/11 attacks, four presidents have launched strikes against suspected terrorists in at least seven nations, including Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. But with this week's air strike in international waters in the southern Caribbean, Trump expanded the counterterrorism campaign's mission to a new part of the world, against a different kind of threat. And in doing so, he drew the military even deeper into crime fighting, work that has traditionally been outside its scope."

"They are escorting immigration officers as they arrest undocumented immigrants in American cities, combatting crime with their presence in the U.S. capital, and stopping drugs at the southern border. Off the shores of Venezuela, U.S. ships are massing in a show of force against drug traffickers, a threat long addressed through interdiction at U.S. points of entry or in international or U.S. waters-not through lethal strikes."

President Donald Trump released a 30-second black-and-white video showing a U.S. aircraft missile striking a small smuggling boat, destroying it and killing 11 individuals described as "narco-terrorists" on a mission that threatened American lives. The strike, carried out in international waters in the southern Caribbean, expanded counterterrorism operations into a new region and against drug trafficking. U.S. armed forces are increasingly performing law-enforcement tasks both domestically and abroad, including escorting immigration arrests, bolstering security in Washington, and interdicting drugs at the southern border. U.S. naval forces are massing off Venezuela, signaling a shift toward militarized responses to criminal smuggling.

Read at The Atlantic