A reporter asked President Trump why he hasn't asked for congressional approval to airstrike narcoterrorists in the Caribbean.
Here was his answer:
I don't think we're gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We're gonna kill them. They're gonna be, like, dead.
A declaration of war requires a vote in Congress, but this has not been done since 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Instead, presidents have been given limited power to conduct war without a full congressional declaration.
Former President Barack Obama, using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al-Qaeda and the 2002 authorization for Iraq, famously ordered thousands of individual drone strikes without new approval. The bulk of these were during the fight to stop ISIS (2014-2016), but Obama oversaw hundreds of individual strikes across North Africa and the Middle East, resulting in around 4,000 casualties (including several hundred civilians).
Under the Trump administration, the War Department has taken out ten drug boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific since last month.
The president says his next step is to take out land targets in South America.
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