”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
The opening words in the life story of the American democratic republic are well-known. We must not take their historic meaning for granted. Human rights are “unalienable” because no person or institution can separate them from any human being. The United States was founded to make summary executions, arbitrary imprisonment, and tyranny in all forms, functionally impossible.
This is the logic that structures the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Article I gives Congress sole authority to declare war. War cannot be initiated or declared by any other means. It also gives Congress sole authority to regulate international commerce, and to determine whether a particular commercial activity is unlawful and what the law enforcement response is. Article II gives the Executive branch no such powers.
The Bill of Rights arose from a need to ensure those fundamental rights the republic was established to uphold would have primacy over the whims—individual or collective—of the three branches of federal government, or of the states. It was not enough to determine which part of the government can make what kind of decisions; real and incontrovertible constraints needed to be placed on the uses of power, to ensure inhuman and tyrannical decisions would not be made.
Of course the First Amendment precludes intrusion by government into thoughts, words, beliefs, and friendships, and the Fourth bars any search or seizure—of people or property—without evidence-based consent from the independent judiciary. The First Amendment also prohibits any law that would impede a citizen seeking to right an injustice.
The Ninth Amendment goes as far as to state that rights need not be enumerated in law to enjoy the full protection of the Constitution, over and above any desire of the powerful to act without constraint. The Bill of Rights is clear that power is subordinate to the human rights of every living soul.
The Fifth Amendment helps to clarify this:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury… nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…
The Fifth Amendment, and so the Constitution of the United States, prohibits absolutely any form of summary sentencing or summary execution. The federal government of the United States may not kill people, simply because the President wants to kill them.
The 2nd missile strike on September 2, 2025—which was intended specifically to end the lives of two men who survived the first strike—was clearly illegal. We quote here at length a report from Just Security:
Here, suffice it to note that the DoD Law of War Manual is categorical: “It is … prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations.” The Manual further emphasizes that the rule “also applies during non-international armed conflict” (§ 5.4.7).
A closely related prohibition implicated in the Sept. 2 strikes, which also applies in both international and non-international armed conflict, is on attacking those who are hors de combat, a condition that includes those who are “defenseless” because they are shipwrecked (see ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study, rule 47 and related practice). As the DoD Law of War Manual explains (§ 5.9.4),
Shipwrecked combatants include those who have been shipwrecked from any cause…. Persons who have been incapacitated by … shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. In order to receive protection as hors de combat, the person must be wholly disabled from fighting.
The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations similarly provides, “Intentional attack on a combatant who is known to be hors de combat constitutes a grave breach of the law of armed conflict” (§ 8.2.3). Indeed, as noted in the Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare published by the U.S. Naval War College’s Stockton Center, Geneva Convention II
sets forth a legal framework for the humane treatment and protection of victims of armed conflict at sea. The Convention requires parties to the conflict to, inter alia, respect and protect individuals falling within the scope of the Convention “who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked.” Parties to a conflict are thus required, after each engagement and without delay, to “take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick,” without discriminating between their own and enemy personnel.
To be clear, there is no exception to the prohibition on attacking those who are hors de combat due to being shipwrecked because they might escape or otherwise receive rescue assistance from their forces. The only basis for treating them as subject to continued attack is if they are, in fact, not hors de combat because they continue to fight.
In a guest essay for the The New York Times, Phil Klay—a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war—describes the story, told by St. Augustine, of Alypius, a Roman man forced by his peers to witness murder for sport, and the violence done to his soul as a result. Augustine described a scene that “seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty” and how Alypius “imbibed madness” and came to celebrate what he had previously understood to be intolerable evil.
It should be noted: To this day, not one piece of evidence has bee presented to Congress, to any court, or to the public, to demonstrate that the people targeted in these attacks were, in fact, participating in the alleged trafficking activities Mr. Trump claims an unwritten power to treat as acts of war. Even if that would make the attacks lawful, he has declined to make them lawful himself.
According to the American constitutional system, drug trafficking is a violation of criminal law, not an act of war. Traffickers must face a law enforcement response. No official, including the President of the United States, has any authority whatsoever to alter that fact.
It is not only the second strike on September 2, specifically intended to murder helpless survivors at sea, that is illegal. The President is claiming a power the Constitution specifically denies him—to end the lives of anyone he wishes based solely on his own allegations, without evidence, in direct contravention of the Constitution.
The right to remain alive unless due process leads to a conviction for a capital crime cannot be separated from any human being, under the Constitution of the United States. No person can contravene that absolute standard. Testimony given to the Senate on Thursday, December 4, 2025, that commanders feared the two survivors of the September 2 strike shipwrecked might radio for help, does not make extrajudicial killing lawful, as noted above.
The boat strikes are illegal uses of military power—power that belongs to the American people, not to the President, and which must be wielded with absolute allegiance to fundamental rights and the rule of law. They are acts of violence aimed at usurping the Constitutional order and creating a tyrannical state that kills at the whim of one man who recognizes no law.
What President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are doing, by asserting this nonexistent and specifically prohibited power, is to demand implicit consent from the American people that they can ignore the Constitution, commit the highest of crimes, and continue to wield power unhindered by rights protections or the rule of law. If they succeed, it is not only the lives of those killed that will be ignored and eroded, but all of the rights of everyone protected by the Constitution.
The Faithful Citizen 