OPINION:
Judge Andrew Napolitano is wrong when he claims in his recent op-ed that President Trump usurped Congress’ power to declare war when he ordered an attack on an oceangoing drug boat (“Trump’s Caribbean boat killings expose dangerous executive overreach,” Web, Sept. 10).
A war is armed combat between nations. The attack on the drug boat was not an attack on another nation; it was an attack on drug-peddling terrorists whose cargo threatened American lives. No foreign power was involved. Even if the boat were operating in cahoots with or under orders from a foreign power, presumably Venezuela, there would be no war for Congress to declare.
At worst, the attack on the drug boat is a one-off, with no Venezuelan response. If the president orders further attacks on drug boats and Venezuela uses its armed forces to repel the attacks, we might have a war for Congress to declare. But uncontested attacks on drug boats, no matter how many attacks there are, is not a war.
In the years before U.S. entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attacked German ships to protect commerce between the U.S. and Britain, with no congressional declaration of war and little German response. There was no war between the U.S. and Germany until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
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