In the modern sense, yes. We no longer declare wars explicitly, nor do we limit that decision to Congress. Trump's decision to attack these targets is consistent with every other conflict we've engaged in since before either of us were born... national security threats. Even if you believe the dope itself to be no great national security threat, that's just their payload today, maybe next time they'll smuggle in a nuke or whatever.

Of all the things that people on the left might find objectionable about Trump, this should be at the very far bottom of the list.

Seems like it’s turning into one

The majority of the West has implicitly or explicitly ceded their national defense and warfighting capabilities to the USA. The comparison between USA and “other countries” isn’t really valid, as the situations are vastly different

It matters quite a lot, it’s the biblical difference between killing and murder.

I assume the pretext is actually the war on terror because of the heavy involvement of Venezuela and its drug cartels with financing and supporting of Hezbollah and the IRGC

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/venezuela-...

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA3...

> They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners.

And even at worst, if the Navy boarded those boats, found drugs, summarily executing everyone on board would still be murder. Rule of law is what separates us from animals, and the people ordering and carrying out these killings fall squarely in the latter.

Carrying water for this is beyond the pale, but is, of course, fully in alignment with a cornerstone of a political philosophy - that there are rules that protect some people, but do not bind them, and that there are rules that bind other people, but do not protect them.

> This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does

That's unclear. We'd have to know more about what sort of deterrent it is making on the drug runners. Quite possibly this does have them shitting their pants and delaying shipments hoping to avoid the risk. At the very least that's not absolutely impossible. When someone says "it's expensive theater" in this circumstance, I think that their criticism has more to do with their objection to the person ordering the strikes and less to do with the effectiveness of them, especially considering that we might not know for months what the true impact is.

3) quite a few US laws apply to US citizens on non-US soil (paying domestic taxes on foreign income)

4) US law applies to non-US citizens who have never set foot in the USA (Kim Dotcom)

Just some ideas:

- Drone-bombing an embassy in downtown London does not look good on social media

- He's too famous and has many supporters in the Western world to be publicly assassinated, regardless of location (example: Lady Gaga visited him while he was stuck in the embassy)

- He's more useful as a deterrent, i.e., "see what might happen to you", to the people who might decide to go a similar route. Some will go that route regardless, but chances are at least a few have been persuaded otherwise.

For all the ridicule of the government, the Intelligence Community seems to be doing a fairly intelligent job most of the time to satisfy its objectives.

It does not apply in general, but a country will always declare jurisdiction if deemed necessary. A common example in Germany is that the country will try to enforce German law for foreign-hosted websites hosted by citizen of another country if the website is targeted at German citizen.