Rubio Dodges Accountability at Senate Hearing as Deadly Boat Strikes Continue |
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As former colleagues fumed about the administration’s failure to consult Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended President Donald Trump’s rapid escalation of the “war on drugs” in the Caribbean and Latin America before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 28. Rubio testified for almost three hours in his first congressional hearing since U.S. forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a deadly raid on January 3.
“This is the first public hearing we’ve had. Two hundred folks who were on secret designated combatant lists have been killed, U.S. troops have been injured, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, an armada amassed, and the announcement of a new Monroe doctrine which does not land well in the Americas,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), noting operations began nearly five months ago. “Democrats have asked over and over again, can we have a public hearing?”
After months of U.S. military belligerence in international waters without congressional oversight, Rubio claimed the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela but is at war with drug smugglers, which he called “enemy combatants” with advanced weapons. However, Rubio distanced himself from dozens of airstrikes on small boats that have killed at least 126 people since September, deferring questions to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, despite Rubio’s double role as Trump’s national security advisor. Rubio’s prepared remarks did not mention the boat strikes.
The administration has claimed the boats are operated by “designated terrorist groups” and transporting drugs but has not provided evidence to the public. Democrats are continuing to demand the White House declassify intelligence privately shared with lawmakers, including a video of a controversial follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to wreckage of a boat in September, which some Democrats have described as deeply disturbing.
Since October, the administration has pointed to a secret Office of Legal Counsel memo equating drugs with weapons of war and stating that the U.S. is in “non-international armed conflict” with unspecified smuggling groups. Legal experts have said Trump’s boat strikes amount to extrajudicial assassinations since the targets are civilians, not military, despite the administration’s posturing. But even if the administration’s justifications for treating the boats as military targets were taken at face value, legal scholars say the September follow-up strike was a likely war crime.
“Even five months in there is a lot we can’t talk about,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) during the hearing on Wednesday. “If it’s such a righteous operation, then why is the administration and the majority in this Senate so jealously protecting the details about it from being revealed to the American public?”
Rubio’s testimony came one........