Charlie Savage

We're seeing congressional oversight committees swinging into action, asking hard questions.

We'll see how committed they remain to, you know, getting the answers.

But it looks kind of like the way congressional oversight is supposed to function.

And people are interested in something that is objectively very important.

On the other hand, the questions of who said what, when, with what intent and with what interpretation about the second strike are very narrow once you start really drilling down on it.

in a way that is arguably distracting from the broader issue that has been apparent from the beginning and is not limited to the second missile strike, but to all the missile strikes.

The United States is engaged in an extraordinary, legally edgy to say the least, operation with literally deadly consequences.

And the broader issue of is this an armed conflict, is this a war at all, hangs over the entire thing.

And if it's not a war, if it's not an armed conflict, even if Trump says he's determined that it is one, then it's not just those two deaths from that second missile on September 2nd.

Charlie Savage, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

President Trump and the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have ordered military special operations forces in the Caribbean to attack boats in international waters, at least for now, that are suspected of smuggling drugs for certain purposes.

cartels and gangs that Trump has controversially designated as terrorist organizations.

And this is a fundamental shift in how the United States has been dealing for years and years with the problem of drug smuggling coming out of Latin America across the water towards the United States.

In a really dramatic and legally disputed shift, the United States is claiming a right to summarily kill everyone on a boat it suspects of drug running in international waters, to essentially treat the issue of drug smuggling as if it's an armed attack on the United States, and to kill people suspected of participating in that activity as if they were combatants on a battlefield in a war.

Absolutely.

There's been pushing and tugging on the laws around armed conflict and the use of force in the 21st century because of the war on terrorism and the notion of a war against a non-state actor like al-Qaeda.

But this is fundamentally different than that.

This is treating people who are civilians, even if they are suspected of being criminals, as if they were combatants and killing them without any kind of due process.