Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, strongly condemned the US military strikes in the Caribbean as President Trump on Sept. 15 disclosed that he had ordered a second strike this month on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three on board.
“President Trump’s actions are an outrageous violation of the law and a dangerous assault on our Constitution,” Reed said on Sept. 15. Reed is also a senior member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. “No president can secretly wage war or carry out unjustified killings — that is authoritarianism, not democracy.”
“These reckless, unauthorized operations not only put American lives at risk, they threaten to ignite a war with Venezuela that would drag our nation into a conflict we did not choose,” added Reed, one of just eight senators in US history to graduate from West Point Military Academy in New York. “The American people deserve to know what is being done in their name and why.
“Congress must demand answers, force transparency, and hold this administration accountable before it plunges us into another needless war,” he continued.
In announcing the second strike on his social medium, Truth Social, Trump intimated that the US military could expand its strikes on alleged drug cartels in the Caribbean.
“The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the U.S.,” he posted.
“These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests,” he added.
About two weeks ago, Trump had ordered the US military to strike a boat in the Caribbean Sea, off Venezuela, killing 11, allegedly carrying drugs.
Later, on Monday, Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that he has strong evidence that the latest boat was carrying drugs.
“We have proof,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean — big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
Trump warned that the military strikes would expand to land, potentially triggering a land war with Venezuela.
“We’re telling the cartels right now we’re going to be stopping them, too,” he said. “When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats.
“But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won’t happen,” the US President added. “If it doesn’t happen, that’s good.”
Speaking from the Senate’s floor last week, Reed noted that Trump gave two orders to the US military that he described as “astonishing, even by this administration’s standards.
“First, he ordered the Department of Defense to be renamed the ‘Department of War’ — a political theater exercise designed to sound tough while distracting from the real issues facing this nation,” he said. “Second, he ordered a military strike on a speedboat operating in the Caribbean, reportedly killing 11 people on board.”
In response to the attack, Reed said Venezuela has placed its military on high alert, “and we are one miscalculation away from a shooting war that no one in this chamber has authorized.
“Rather than rebranding itself, the Pentagon should be providing to Congress and the American public answers: the intelligence that justified that strike, the legal authority the president relied upon, and an assurance that we are not drifting toward another undeclared war,” Reed said.
“I am deeply concerned about the president’s military actions in the Caribbean, which were taken without congressional authorization, without clear legal justification, and without any evidence presented that it was necessary to protect the United States or its forces from an imminent threat,” he added. “Now nearly a week after the operation and amid threats of additional actions, the administration is just beginning to brief Congress on these issues.
“I want to be very clear: We all share a commitment to protecting the American people from transnational criminal organizations. Cartels are violent and dangerous, and they cannot be allowed to traffic across our borders. But we cannot allow that homeland security mission to become a blank check for war,” the senator warned. “We cannot let one man’s impulsive decision-making entangle this nation in another conflict we neither need nor want.”
Reed said the initial US strike in the Caribbean was “no minor confrontation.
“This was a deliberate, lethal use of American military power,” he said. “There is no evidence — none — that this strike was conducted in self-defense. That matters, because under both domestic and international law, the US military simply does not have the authority to use lethal force against a civilian vessel unless acting in self-defense.
“The Trump administration has offered no proof that this vessel was engaged in an attack, or even that it was engaged in drug trafficking at the time,” Reed added. “They have offered no positive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew were members of Tren de Aragua or any other cartel.
“We cannot allow the United States to slide into another mindless conflict,” Reed said. “We cannot risk the lives of American servicemembers based on secret orders and dubious legal theories.”
Queens Democratic Congressman Gregory W. Meeks, the Ranking Member of the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, is also demanding answers from the Trump administration for the legal justification for the US Armed Forces’ strike on an alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean Sea.
“I am deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s shifting narratives, contradictory facts, and utter failure to provide a legal justification for this strike,” said Meeks, who represents New York’s 5th Congressional District in Queens, on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
“Donald Trump does not have the authority to order strikes in international waters,” the congressman continued. “Only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war or authorize military force. The administration must make its legal justification for these strikes clear, because this strike appears unlawful under both US and international law.”
Meeks also wants the Trump administration to provide Congress the intelligence, including what immediate threat to the United States justified the extrajudicial killing of 11 individuals.
“Unjustified unilateral actions like this emulate the behavior of authoritarian leaders, such as Maduro (the Venezuelan leader), rather than counter them,” he said.
“The Trump administration’s credibility is already in tatters, from deporting people to foreign gulags based on false claims and cherry-picking intelligence that suits its political agenda, to now contradicting itself about where the boat was heading when it was struck,” Meeks added. “The American people deserve the truth.
