(Inner) Peace Train

At first, I thought I had missed my opportunity.

We were in Winston-Salem Sunday morning trying to beat the wintry weather forecast and consequently, I resigned myself from any hope of seeing the 20 or so Buddhist monks come through Lexington during their incredible 2,300-mile Walk for Peace pilgrimage.

Monks walk for peace in Lexington.

 Somehow, their route from Ft. Worth, Texas, to Washington, DC, penciled its way through little ol' Lexington.

"Not a big deal," I rationalized to myself, figuring how could I feel bad about missing something that I'd never see in the first place?

But when we got back home a little after noon, we were astonished to see cars parked everywhere, especially near the J. Smith Young YMCA. It looked a bit like a mini barbecue festival. The monks were scheduled to take a rest break at First Lutheran Church next to the Y and to offer a message of peace, comfort and tranquility to the assembled. A fairly large crowd was milling around on State Street in front of the church. Several police vehicles were flashing their blue lights.

"They're still here," I said. "I'm going."

A half hour later, I was standing in front of the Army-Navy store on Main Street, along with thousands of others lining the way. Many folks were from out of town. 

An hour passed by as temperatures dipped to 38 degrees. Then another hour passed as a sporadic wintry mix of snow and rain fell from the clouds. As spectators, we'd become monks ourselves, exercising our own brand of patient discipline through the inclement weather.

Then, around 3 p.m. – "They're coming!"

 I made my way to the Square. The moment was indelible.

The monks, walking in single file – some carrying bouquets of flowers and wearing their signature orange robes – smiled or bowed their heads as they passed by. It might have been at this point where I remembered their mission and it sent a shiver of humility through me.

The monks follow the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition and are affiliated with the Huong Dao Temple in Ft. Worth. The mission of the Walk for Peace, inspired by the teachings of Gautama Buddha, is to raise awareness of "peace, loving kindness and compassion across America and the world."

There is also an emphasis on inner tranquility in their message. 

The walk has had its challenges. In November, several monks were injured when their support vehicle was struck by a truck, near Dayton, Texas The impact pushed the support vehicle into some of the walking monks, injuring three. One of them suffered a traumatic injury that ultimately required having his left leg amputated.

Their journey is funded through donations through platforms like Zelle or Zeffy, or directly to the Huong Dao Temple. Also, the Youth Peace and Justice Foundation is committed to sponsoring elements of the pilgrimage.

The monks tend to sleep outdoors in tents or in hosted venues such as temples or churches. Two of the monks practice the dhutanga discipline in which they do not lie down. They can assume only one of three postures:walking, standing or sitting – even when sleeping.

We live in precarious times and it could be easy to be cynical about the message propelling the Walk for Peace. I can't help but think we need a moment like this right now, to see the potential that lies within each of us to be better.

 

 

 

 

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Imagine that

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

                 Imagine - John Lennon, 1971

 

It was brought to my attention last week that perhaps the tragedy of Renee Good's murder in Minneapolis, MN, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent could have been avoided if only there hadn't been that thoughtless open borders policy under the Biden Administration.

I don't know. Open borders may or may not have been the case. Or at least a contributing factor.

Me in 1973 - a long-haired hippie.

 What I do know is that the issue of immigration has been problematic for every presidential administration dating back to Eisenhower – and probably longer. Eisenhower had his own deportation initiative horrendously stamped "Operation Wetback." About 250,000 people were "returned" to Mexico under the program.

Which got me to thinking. Back in my college days – back in the early 1970s – I pretty much embraced the idealism propelling the hippie movement of love and peace. Most of my thinking at the time was generated by the war in Vietnam, which was consuming the lives of America's youth at a prodigious cost.

I think it was around this time when I began thinking that if we lived in a truly righteous world there would be no countries. If there were no countries, perhaps there would be no wars. 

Like I said, idealistic. That was never going to happen. War, I think, is forever in our DNA.

Then "Star Trek" came out in the mid 1960s as a by-product of the hippie movement, showing us that Earthlings had solved their petty prejudices by the 23rd century. When former Beatle John Lennon imagined no countries in 1971, I thought I had found a fellow traveler.

No countries. It's still an intriguing concept. Why can't people move across the planet without restriction? Who's bright idea was borders anyway? If you're a believer, do you think borders is what God had in mind for us?

But as humans, we are separated by differences in languages, in cultures, in politics. I suppose those barriers are in our DNA, too.

But the war against immigration fluctuates over time. In some eras, it's almost invisible. In other eras, it's a political flash point. Most countries (countries!) have problems with immigration, but in the United States, over the course of the past 250 years, our white Anglo-Saxon forebears have shown discrimination against the Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese (or Asians in general), Catholics, Jews and people with brown or black skin. Prove me wrong. Our history as a nation of immigrants is littered with this travesty.

In recent years, the demographics of this country are palpably shifting. There will be more brown-skinned people within our borders (borders!) than Whites. Right now, it's the policy of the current administration to remove (deport) non-Whites, both documented and undocumented.

It's a horrible policy that's hurting the country.

There's a bitter irony here. Undocumented immigrants legally pay billions of dollars in taxes (an estimated $96.7 billion in 2022, including $34 billion in social security), yet are ineligible for social security or Medicare benefits themselves. Don't forget to say thank you.

Deporting undocumented immigrants seems self-defeating to the economy to which they contribute as a whole.

And guess what? Undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. This flies in the face of the Trump administration, which preys on white fear that immigrants are rapists and criminals (the president himself is a convicted felon). Trump's promoting of immigrants as undesirables is more of a way to control the general population than it is to control the flow of immigration.

It's stupid policy.

Instead of funding ICE with a budget greater than most of the world's armies ($37 billion), perhaps we should be finding ways to better assist those seeking entry into the U.S., including those seeking asylum from their own oppressive governments.

Imagine that. 

 

 

Deadly ICE

Since Wednesday's news of the shooting and killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, both Kim and I find ourselves a bit distracted, a bit disturbed and fully appalled by what's happening in this country.

Armed and masked federal agents are shooting and killing the citizenry. 

By now, as you are probably aware of yourself, video of the incident has been analyzed relentlessly from numerous angles and you have already formed your own opinion. Those on the right of the political spectrum feel as though Good was trying to evade federal agents by using her vehicle as a weapon and thus caused her own death. Those on the left feel like she was murdered by an overzealous and troubled gunman who resorted to deadly force way too quickly.

Investigations will provide some answers, although even that is suspect since the Federal Bureau of Investigation, by order of the Trump administration, is now the only agency charged with handling the matter. The state of Minnesota is currently blocked from sharing collected information with the FBI. This highly unusual action in itself stinks of a coverup and it's barely just begun. Pulling down the shades on transparency is an element of a fascist society. Truth is always the first victim.

Just for the record, according to WBAL-TV out of Baltimore, there have been 16 shootings by ICE agents since Trump began his second term as president last January. Four people have been killed and at least seven have been injured. And according to The Trace, an organization that tracks gun violence in America, there could be even more injuries since not all shootings are reported.

Three of the four deadly shootings have come in the last month. And here's something to think about: in December, an ICE agent shot at a man driving an SUV in St. Paul, Minnesota, after the driver struck two agents with his car. The driver was uninjured, but the incident, still fresh, may have put ICE agents in Minneapolis on edge – and perhaps made them trigger happy.

Which begs the question: what the hell is ICE doing in Minnesota anyway? What exactly is the mission when you have to shoot women in the head?

The Trump administration has given ICE a budget ($37.5 billion. Yes, billion) larger than the military of many countries in an effort to deport a million illegal aliens per year. That many deportations means quotas. That means innocent people, including native-born citizens, sometimes get caught in the net.

Consequently, ICE has been recruiting more agents – some who are former military, some who are former law enforcement and some with no training at all – to meet those quotas. Subsequently, in a rush to meet those government-sanctioned deportation numbers, training has suffered. Twenty-seven weeks weeks of training in some cases has dwindled to eight weeks. Here's your gun, Bucky, go get 'em.

Not too long ago, ICE agents wore blue windbreakers with ICE printed across the breast as an identifier. Now agents are masked (purportedly to protect them from doxing) and dressed out in full military gear, including body armor and automatic weapons. If masking is so crucial to ICE, then why aren't municipal cops wearing them as standard issue? I know why. ICE is in the business of intimidation. Local law enforcement is in the business of serving and protecting.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, had been involved in a previous incident six months ago when he hooked his arm into a car window that was driven by an alleged fugitive who sped off. He was trying to unlock the door. Ross required multiple stitches in his arm and leg.

Which raises another question: was Ross suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) linked to his June incident or perhaps from his service in Iraq? Why was he even in the field just months after his June episode? 

One of the first things I thought was that perhaps he was a misogynist because it appeared so easy for him to put three bullets into her head. His own video of her just seconds before murdering her has her saying, with a smile on her face: "That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you."

He was mad at her, though. She was in control of the moment. Damn woman.

Then he shot her. Three times. On a busy street clustered with surprised colleagues and spectators. While taking video of her with one hand and a gun in the other. What the hell? When did that become law enforcement procedure? It all seems pretty reckless. And arrogant.

It's quite possible he ignored correct law enforcement protocol when approaching Good's vehicle from the front, and there are any number of case histories that address this:

• Barnes v. Felix  (May 2025). Supreme Court rules 9-0 that courts can no longer excuse a police shooting just because the officer was "in danger of the moment" if the officer created that danger himself. If an officer puts himself in harm's way – like stepping in front of a car or jumping on to it – they cannot automatically claim deadly force was reasonable.

• Abraham v. Raso, 183 F.3d 279. An officer cannot rely on "split second" framing of their own actions.

• Kirby v. Duva, 530 F.3d 475. Deadly force may be unconstitutional (1) if the officer fired into a moving vehicle; (2) if the officer could have stepped aside and did not; (3) a fleeing car is not automatically a deadly threat.

•   •   •

One of the more disturbing outcomes from all of this is how Good – the victim – is being portrayed by some elements as a paid political agitator and a sorry parent who lost custody of two of her three children because of child abuse.

So far, there is no evidence of either. And yet, some elements are joyfully proclaiming that she "fucked around and found out." Or FAFO, in case you're seeing a lot of that lately and not sure what it means. FAFO has trickled down from the White House as its latest motto. It's even been used to describe the recent capture of Venezuelan president Nicholás Maduro. He FAFO.

I'm not sure how FAFO aligns with the Christian-Judeo principles that founded this country. I'm pretty sure FAFO is not in the Ten Commandments. But we sure are hearing it a lot these days.

But the bigger picture from the ICE episode seems to point to unchecked state power that appears to becoming even bolder by the day. Federal agents are working with little transparency or accountability. People have been swept up off the streets, placed in vans and taken to detention centers out of the country. No due process to be found. Unless we resist, we are slowly being driven into compliance by a president who says he can only be stopped by his own morality (I wonder if he meant mortality?). Maybe even martial law. How do the midterm elections look now?

Meanwhile, there's the Epstein files. Part of the bigger picture, I think.

 

 

 

Peace president strikes again

I'm trying to process how it feels to live in an aggressor nation.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  There was a time when President Obama bombed the poop out of Libya (March 2011) to pressure dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Obama then essentially did something similar when he ordered American military to fly over Pakistani airspace to kill Osama bin Laden (May 2011) as a response to the Al Qaeda leader's attacks of 9/11. Both actions were carried out without congressional approval, although Obama did have the cover of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, a joint resolution approved by congress in 2001 immediately after 9/11.

In June of 2025, convicted felon president Donald Trump bombed three Iranian nuclear sites without seeking congressional approval. No protection from AUMF on that one.

Later in the year, Trump began blowing up Venezuelan speedboats on the unproven accusation that they were carrying drugs to the United States. Again, there was no congressional approval for this action. More than 100 people have been killed in these strikes so far. Absurdly, all while this is unfolding Trump is publicly pining for a Nobel Peace Prize.

You can go back to 1989 and review the parallel capture of Panama president Manuel Noriega, who had declared war on the United States. That declaration gave American President George H. W. Bush the legal ground he needed to execute the operation.

Maybe I should be used to the United States being an aggressor nation. But when I woke up Saturday morning and turned on the television, the first thing I saw was images of Caracas, Venezuela, being bombed. The chyron running across the bottom of the screen told me that Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro and his wife had been captured and were being brought to the United States to face charges of cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Congress was taken by surprise. Extradition by force of will, if not by force of law. We are not at war with Venezuela, a significant difference from the Noriega affair. And yet, while no American lives were reportedly lost in the operation, perhaps as many as 40 Venezuelans were killed.

People keep dying under Trump.

And there's more.

Trump said in a news presser later in the day that the United States "would run the country (Venezuela) until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."

Holy shit. Now we're taking over sovereign nations because we don't like their leaders? When did we start doing that? And what does he consider to be "proper" about all of this?

Oh, yeah. I forgot. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserve. Trump alluded to that in his news presser, mentioning over and over the American oil companies that could help ignite the Venezuelan economy. So there it is, right out there in the daylight: oil. It's always been about the oil. He said it himself. It's never been about drugs. That's why he can pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was prosecuted in the U.S. on multiple counts of drug and arms trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Jeez. Maybe Maduro can get a pardon, too.

The corruption is astonishing. 

And wait. Wouldn't "running the country" require American boots on the ground? How's that going to pan out? Maduro is a very bad man, but a significant percentage of Venezuela still supports the Maduro regime. If the American military ends up in Venezuela, won't American lives be in jeopardy? At least the American military has gained critical experience in occupation after being sent to quell those non-existent riots in Los Angeles, Washington DC and other American cities. You know. Like they were a training ground.

Does this Venezuelan operation set a precedent for China to attack Taiwan? How about giving Russia's Vladimir Putin license to abduct Ukraine's Volodymir Zelenskyy? 

Suddenly the world seems less safe.

This entire Venezuelan operation reeks of distraction. It costs money to sail all those ships, fly all those helicopters and launch all that ordnance. I guess we paid for it with tariff monies. Or maybe Elon Musk chipped in. He's already promising to help fund Republicans in their midterm campaigns.

Congress returns to session on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Does J6 ring a bell? Think there might be some coverage there that a convicted felon president who pardoned all those J6 convicted felons might like to avoid? Oh, yeah. What about affordability? What about measles making a comeback? What about tanking poll numbers?

What about the Epstein files?

There's no better distraction from your failures than dropping bombs and shooting guns.

Process that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jen Pawol

Even while living in a sleepy little town in the South, you sometimes have an opportunity to rub shoulders with history.

The last thing I ever expected was to meet up with Jen Pawol, the first female umpire to call balls and strikes in major league baseball history.

 

Jen Pawol became MLB's first female umpire this year.

G'wan. Get out of here. In Lexington?

But, yes. It really happened. 

When our neighbor, Pam Zanni, knocked on our door yesterday afternoon, she wanted to know if we'd received her email invitation to join her and her husband, Jason, for their Christmas party that night. She couldn't remember if she sent us the invite or not. Umm, no. I don't think so.

"Well, come over around 6 p.m., " said Pam. "It's going to be a surprise. It's sports."

The surprise lasted maybe all of five seconds because then she added, "Jen Pawol's going to be here."

To be honest, the name "Jen Pawol" didn't set off an immediate fire alarm. I'm an old guy, memory is fuzzy these days, and besides, we're out of baseball season. My mental Rolodex was spinning. But somewhere in the next minute or so, the word "umpire" popped up in the conversation – Jason umpires professionally as a side hustle – and everything came into focus.

Pam Zanni (left) and Jen Pawol.

 Just for a refresher, in case your memory is fuzzy, too, Pawol finally reached the majors last August after umpiring baseball for about nine years at the minor league level. Then, on Aug. 9, she was called up as a fill-in ump for the Miami-Atlanta series at Truist Park.

She took the field as the first-base ump in the first game of a doubleheader that day, and you could hear the glass ceiling cracking like ice on a thawing pond all over major league baseball. Maybe everywhere. It was that historic. Baseball is America's pastime, after all.

Then, the next day, she was behind the plate. When you're the plate umpire, all 40,000 eyes in the stadium are on you. You can feel the weight of the glare. It's the game's feature position, with all the attendant pressure. Double that pressure if you're female. C'mon, man. It's balls and strikes. Meat and potatoes.

Pawol graded out well at 91 percent that day. Not bad for her first performance in the Big Show. The major league average is about 94 or so. 

Pawol ended up working 18 games last year and she'll come into the 2026 season as one of 15 minor league umps on the fill-in list. There are 76 fulltime umpires in the MLB, but with injuries, vacations, personal leave and whatnot, Pawol should have plenty of opportunities to work more games this year. And to gain more experience. She'll be 49 years old in a couple days and the ultimate goal still remains to become a fulltime MLB ump.

When she did show up at the Zanni party – she was there because of Jason's umpiring connections, plus there were at least five collegiate level umpires there last night – I think the last thing she expected was to be interviewed. I introduced myself and my wife, Kim, to Pawol and told her that I was a retired sports editor from the local paper. 

I didn't have prepared questions, or a note pad, nor did I turn on my cell phone recorder, mostly because it's hard to conduct a proper interview while standing over the horseradish dip with people milling around. But she was gracious and patient as I asked my several questions and then filed her responses away for future reference. 

MLB is introducing the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) this year. It's high-tech umpiring with Hawkeye cameras tracking the pitch to a player's defined strike zone. A team gets two challenges per game to question an umpire's call and doesn't lose a challenge unless the original call stands. Pawol said she was OK with that.

"I'll do whatever they tell me to do," said Pawol, who won Baseball America's Trailblazer of the Year Award. "I'll paint the bases green if they want me to." (Pawol, incidentally, is also an artist with a Master's in Fine Arts. I suppose she can paint anything she wants.) 

Doe's she have a sense of her place in breaking baseball's glass ceiling? 

"It felt empowering," said Pawol. "It gave me so much joy and satisfaction. Baseball gives me joy. It's a great game. It really is."

Does she get the support she needs for her accomplishment?

"Everybody's been wonderful," said Pawol. "And I'm grateful." 

Her cap, the one she wore in Atlanta when she made her historic MLB appearance, was requested by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and to which she gladly donated. So now she is enshrined in baseball history for all of posterity.

As Kim and I were leaving, we thanked Jason for the evening.

He pulled me aside for a quiet word.

"Can you believe this?" asked Jason. "If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd have a major league umpire in my house, I'd have said you were freaking crazy. This is amazing." 

 Indeed, it was. It was a home run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legacy president

Now our country, under convicted felon president Donald Trump, is committing piracy on the high seas by seizing oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela and brushing it off as policy. He said he'll do it again.

It's pretty outrageous stuff. In fact, Trump's presidential legacy (I prefer to call it his criminal legacy) as he enters the middle of his second term seems to be nothing more than one outrage followed by another outrage of even greater proportion.

I think this all started in his first term when he addressed the border issue in 2017-18 by separating families – parents from their children – who were seeking asylum from the horrors of their own oppressive nations. Instead, many of those parents seeking new lives found themselves prosecuted as illegal aliens and deported while their children were put in cages and placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Remember that? More than 5,500 kids were separated from their parents. To this day, about 1,200 children are still looking to rejoin their families – if they can find them.

Thanks, Trump. 

I thought that was impeachable stuff, but no. America's political backbone for presidential outage was dissolving.

The next big outage came with the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge numbers of People were dying worldwide at an accelerated rate. When the pandemic hit American shores, Trump claimed it was only "one or two" people who were dying in this country and the virus would be contained before it got worse. Instead, within weeks, hospitals were overwhelmed. There were not enough ventilators to go around. Corpses had to be placed in refrigeration trucks serving as morgues and bodies were often buried in mass graves. Oh, you forgot that part, did you?

Trump, to his credit, initiated Operation Warp Speed in 2000 in an effort to find a Covid vaccine. And it happened. In a miracle of modern medical research, mRNA vaccines were developed, reviewed and reviewed again (with over 600 peer reviews). To this day, the vaccines are credited with saving 14 million lives globally. This is about the only moment where I can find that Trump actually did something good for the country.

But then he came down with the virus.. His life was saved by a cocktail of medicines that only a president could afford. When he returned to the White House, he defiantly ripped off his mask, thus invigorating – if only metaphorically – the anti-vaxxer movement. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to die by refusing to be vaccinated.

The legacy of the anti-vaccination movement is that now measles – an illness once eliminated in this country – is now back and flourishing because there is resistance to getting measles shots. What other empirical evidence do you need that the shot works? Measles vaccines, no measles. No vaccine, measles returns. There. Believe the science. Same for Covid. Same for flu. Same for anything that requires a vaccine. And, no, shots do not cause autism. Period.

Then came Jan. 6 2021 when Trump-inspired conservative hooligans (Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys) stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the ceremonial electoral count to affirm Joe Biden as president. That was a horrifying moment in American history where a coup to overthrow the government actually took place in front of our eyes.

We had a four-year hiatus from Trump as the economy grew and inflation dropped to 3 percent from a world-wide high of 9 percent, but then Trump was somehow elected as president again, this time bringing with him Project 2025. You remember Project 2025. It was a blueprint for American as seen by the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation. It's basically a primer on how to make America white again in the face of demographics that show the country is actually becoming browner. Some folks are frightened of that.

What Project 2025 brought us, among other things, is the absurdly named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the elimination of American influence in third-world countries (America first!), the elimination of climate protections, the call for mass deportations of all those brown-skinned people, and a host of other anti-American actions (read the Constitution) that are printed in over the project's 900 pages.

Meanwhile, the Epstein files are about to surface. Trump, who has been declared an adjudicated rapist by a Federal judge following the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit. Trump was also found guilty on 34 counts for falsifying his business records in an attempt to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels for a sexual affair between the two. So why should a connection to a known pedophile like Jeffrey Epstein surprise us?

Rape. Porn star. Pedophilia. Those words are not often associated with active U.S. presidents.

That pretty much brings us to now, where this country is seemingly committing war crimes by blowing up alleged drug traffickers in their speedboat. The premise is that the speedboats are ferrying drugs across 1,000 miles of water from Venezuela to the United States. So instead of relying on due process to stop them, Trump is blowing them up without evidence. So far, nearly 90 people have been killed, and for what? Fentanyl does not come from Venezuela, it comes from China and is manufactured in Mexico. Cocaine comes from Venezuela, but most of the deliveries are destined for European markets. So good. We're making Europe safe again.

And we might be committing war crimes – or murder – if we're blowing up survivors clinging to wreckage with follow-up missile strikes. 

And now, we're taking control of oil tankers. This one, nautically named The Skipper, flies the flag of Guyana, which makes its seizure problematical under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

It could be piracy instead. 

The idea behind this seizure is that the oil is under US sanction – it cannot be sold – but by doing so, the United States might be able to effect regime change in Venezuela in an effort to remove president Nicolás Maduro from office.

Or perhaps the US can muscle Venezuela into a war. I mean, why not? Venezuela has the richest oil reserve in the hemisphere. Why can't it be ours? Naaaa. That's ridiculous.

Isn't it? 

The litany of outrages might speak differently. 

 

Adrift...

 "Meaning of 'Respect and Protection' of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked. The wounded, sick and shipwrecked must be respected and protected at all times. This means that they should not be knowingly attacked, fired upon or necessarily interfered with."

            – Department of Defense Law of War Manuel, section 7.3.3 Shipwrecked, P. 451

 

On Sept. 2 of this year, the Department of Defense, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, began its campaign of attacking and destroying alleged drug-running speedboats from Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. These attacks have been done without due process and without the approval of Congress. Mostly, they appear to be deadly operations conducted by a rogue Department of Defense.

The very first in the series of drone attacks – there have been 22 so far, resulting in 88 deaths – took nearly everyone by surprise because after the boat was destroyed, two survivors were seen to be clinging to the wreckage of the hull. They were in the water for perhaps up to an hour as the DoD tried to figure out what to do next because, well, they didn't plan for this. The survivors were seen waving their arms, probably in distress, perhaps to catch the attention of aircraft seen overhead.

What to do next should be explained in the DoD's own Law of War manual, which states that shipwrecked persons cannot be knowingly attacked or fired upon. Section 7.3.3 of the manual draws much of its language from the Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding humanitarian rules and international standards, which says the sick and wounded are to be retrieved and given care. Not blown up.

Instead, the DoD responded with a second attack, this one incinerating the two survivors.

I don't know if the DoD's manual carries the weight of law or if it's just a collection of suggestions. But there is international law. There is maritime law. There is The Hague and the Court of International Justice. There is the International Criminal Court. 

This entire violent operation puts our country in a difficult position. The Trump administration insists we are in a war with narco-terrorists and the attacks are therefore justified if we are to stop the flow of drugs crossing our borders.

But only Congress – not the president – has the Constitutional power to declare war on a sovereign nation. So here we are: we are either a nation at war committing war crimes (as suggested by the DoD's own manual regarding shipwrecked survivors not to be fired upon), or we are a nation committing murder on the high seas. Take your choice.

After last week's congressional hearings into the matter (where video of the second "double tap"strike was seen) the supposedly bi-partisan meeting predictably retreated to party lines. Arkansas Republican Senator and former veteran Tom Cotton absurdly claimed the video he saw showed the survivors trying to flip the bow half of their overturned motorless boat in order to continue their mission, adding that the attack was "righteous." Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, by contrast, said the attack was an "extrajudicial killing."

Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner asked "Are they drug boats, are there narco traffickers on those boats?. If there are, why don't you interdict them and show the world rather than simply blowing them up – to make sure that sailors are not doing something that's inappropriate?"

Warner makes valid points. Usually, it's the Coast Guard that intercepts and boards alleged drug boats, bringing with them due process. That's their job description. That way there's little question whether the crew of the targeted speedboats are running drugs. That's how you show us the evidence. 

In addition, if the crew are found to be running drugs, you then have actual living prisoners – not cadavers – to interrogate for more information about the cartels. Why has the Coast Guard's mission seemingly been abandoned in favor of lethal assaults – which might include illegal orders, thus putting our servicemen in legal jeopardy? This is exactly what the six Democratic congressmen were talking about a few weeks ago when they cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice that a serviceman has a duty to disobey an illegal order.

Interestingly, the Coast Guard has noted that in at least  25 percent of their boardings of suspected boats, no drugs were found. Extrapolate that statistic to the government's war on suspected narco terrorists, then you could possibly presume that 22 of the 88 dead were ... simply murdered without cause.

We are treading strange and murky waters with a dangerous undertoe here. Do these assaults make our country look strong or out of control? Are we an humanitarian nation, or are we a ruthless oligarchy without a moral compass?

Are we a nation that believes in the rule of law?

Or are we not?