If killing men in boats at sea were truly legal, we wouldn’t need a secret memo to say so. According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel quietly assured the Defense Department last week that U.S. service members cannot be prosecuted for the more than 20 “boat strikes” that have killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

A memo like that does not speak the language of lawfulness. It speaks the language of guilt management and accountability avoidance. When a government must preemptively promise its warriors immunity, it is conceding that it has crossed a line.

This is not an isolated excess. It is the continuation of a moral collapse that has unfolded, memo by memo, across decades of American warfare.

Starting with George W. Bush

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