On President Donald Trump’s orders, the U.S. military last month began carrying out a series of strikes in the Caribbean, blowing up boats suspected of moving drugs and killing a total of at least 27 people so far. (Multiple news outlets reported that a strike yesterday was believed to be the first one to leave survivors.) Although Trump has called the dead “narcoterrorists,” his administration has not provided good evidence to support that characterization. Even pundits who defended extrajudicial killings during the War on Terror years—including Lawfare’s Ben Wittes, National Review’s Andy McCarthy, and John Yoo, the author of the so-called torture memos—have deemed these strikes illegal or legally suspect.

Yet the American people don’t seem particularly concerned. A recent Harris survey found that 71 percent of registered voters support “destroying boats bringing drugs into the United States,” and the strikes have prompted little public outcry. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama meted out death without due process even outside the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, inuring Americans to the practice. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that the Obama administration carried out 563 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, killing 384 to 807 civilians, in addition to militants. If, as Trump repeatedly asserts, “narcoterrorists” from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua pose a threat to national securit