The same Democrats who shrugged at Obama’s secret “Disposition Matrix” now howl about “war crimes” because narco-terrorists, ferrying poison toward U.S. shores, were hit a second time as they tried to reboard their wrecked boat. They weren’t shipwrecked innocents; they were regrouping combatants returning to their platform, and under long-standing law of armed conflict, that vessel remained a lawful military target until it was sunk.

That’s the core distinction former Trump Navy lawyer Tim Parlatore laid out: intent and mission, not media spin, define legality. Just as at Midway, where a burning, crippled Japanese carrier was lawfully torpedoed until it slipped under the waves, the objective in Operation Southern Spear was to neutralize a weapon — a drug boat designed to kill Americans by the thousands. The real scandal isn’t the strike. It’s a political class more outraged by dead traffickers than dead citizens.