Yes, the current administration is morally capable of destroying random ships to claim victories over "bad guys". But they always had that ability.
The difference with this administration is that they aren’t even pretending to follow the nominal controls or rules to wield that force.
There was a legal concept around the drone/missile/commando/aerial strikes to assassinate targeted individuals in the Middle East. The morality of that action was dubious at best, but what’s happening in the Caribbean doesn’t even meet that very low moral, ethical, or legal bar.
This administration, with their craven collaborators on the Supreme Court, is solely focused on asserting virtually unlimited executive power to a fairly obvious end.
but the other half of the wedding party they hit were not...
So yeah consider that the government is so dumb that one half of the government thinks the secular anti-jihadist militias supported by the other half of government are actually jihadists.
It's not a terrible assumption; if you study extremist circles for long enough you come across examples of people who completely flip sides because they were only ever in it for the extralegal opportunities. Of course, you can find similar chameleons in politics.
