Let me alert you to three letters that appeared in the Saturday, December 19, 2025, edition of The New York Times. I read these letters in the hardcopy version of the paper that is delivered to my home each morning. Online, the letters are gathered together under this title: "Trump’s Drone Strikes Are Wrong. Obama’s Were, Too."
It is worth noting, I believe, as we consider the state of our national government, that we have a "systemic" problem, as well as having a "personnel" problem of which many of us are all too aware. Our current president exemplifies that "personnel" problem, since he obviously thinks that he can, and should, act unilaterally in matters of great national importance - basing his idea of his own powers on the fact that he is, after all, our duly-elected chief executive.
In fact, unilateral decision-making by the president is not how our system is supposed to operate. Most consequential decisions about what our nation should do are really supposed to be made by the Congress, by its enactment of "laws" that say both what should be done, and what should not be done, and who should be doing it. The president's basic assignment is to "see that the laws are faithfully executed," which means that he should not be acting unilaterally, but should act only to execute the directions outlined in legislation. There are, granted, a few exceptions to this general rule, but what I have just stated is basically how things are supposed to work, if we look at what the Constitution says. Killing people is always "consequential," of course, and when it's done in our name, it should really be done according to some law that makes clear when, how, and why such killing has been officially directed.
Our current president doesn't act according to the Constitution. He often acts unilaterally - by so-called "Executive Orders" - and he is properly criticized for doing so. Sometimes, our current president doesn't even write down his unilateral orders. He just tells subordinates what to do (which then may allow him to deny he was even involved). The recent killings of people in small boats by the United States military (people who are allegedly drug smugglers) is a prime example of how our current president operates. I have been personally critical of our current president's unilateral decisionmaking, as can be seen from many of my blog postings. My friends and associates frequently make the same point. So do people who write letters to the editor in my hometown newspaper.
This brings me to those three letters in The Times. Below, I am providing a brief summary of each one of them. If The Times paywall policies allow, you can click that link in the first paragraph and then read these letters in their entirety.
#1
The recent lethal American strikes on boats in the Caribbean, which are not part of an armed conflict, are illegal. They are murders. But when Mr. Johnson, a former Obama administration official, insists that there is “a world of legal and moral differences” that separate these attacks from the targeted killings that the Obama administration regularly engaged in, he’s not telling the complete story.
First, Mr. Johnson’s defense of President Barack Obama’s strikes — well more than 500 of them, which killed nearly 4,000 people, including as many as 800 civilians — boils down to his claims that officials in that administration took the law seriously, and engaged in remote-control killings only after soberly determining that they were “necessary to protect American lives.”
Brett Max Kaufman, New York
The writer is a senior staff attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy.
#2
Jeh C. Johnson’s condemnation of the Trump administration’s recent strikes on boats in the Caribbean appears to be either ironic or lacking in self-awareness.While Mr. Johnson argues that Congress gave “implicit” authorization for the Obama administration’s targeted killings in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia — a claim many national security lawyers like me strongly disagree with — it is undeniable that this policy opened the door to what is playing out now off the coast of Latin America.J. Wells Dixon, New York
The writer is a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights.
#3
During my time as a law enforcement officer, I was forbidden to use deadly force against fleeing felons and justified to use it only when someone posed a grave and imminent threat to my life or another person’s life. Otherwise, the use of such force would be an extrajudicial killing — essentially, carrying out a death penalty without a trial.Tobias Winright, Maynooth, IrelandThe writer is a professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University who specializes in the ethics of war and peace.
As we consider what is being done in our name, today, with the U.S. military blasting small boats out of the water, killing everyone on the boats, let's recognize the problem as "systemic." If we care about the "Moral," and "Political," and "Practical" aspects of what is being done in our name, we have to insist that those representing us address just when, where, and why our armed forces will be sent out to kill people.
As the three letters I have excerpted above point out, what has been happening is (1) Wrong, (2) Wrong, (3) Wrong - and it is not just our current president who is responsible for wrong actions taken in our name.
Today, we need to make sure that our elected representatives don't shrug and move on - as has happened in the past. A president who is probably pretty popular with many of those who do not have a high regard for our current chief executive - I am referring to former president Obama - killed many more, in our name. So, "systemic" is the proper way to categorize our problem.
Today, and in the past, what our presidents have done in our name has been Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
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