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Early September marks the anniversary of two “wars”—one an actual armed conflict with a real, albeit stretched and abused legal framework, the other a completely counterfeit enterprise from the get-go. Sept. 11 is of course the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks upon the United States. And Sept. 2 is the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s lethal maritime strikes against vessels alleged to be smuggling drugs.

The Trump administration has cynically tried to cloak its boat strikes in the mantle of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—labeling the victims of these attacks as “narco-terrorists,” supposedly affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations,” which the administration characterizes as the “‘al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”

Early September marks the anniversary of two “wars”—one an actual armed conflict with a real, albeit stretched and abused legal framework, the other a completely counterfeit enterprise from the get-go. Sept. 11 is of course the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks upon the United States. And Sept. 2 is the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s lethal maritime strikes against vessels alleged to be smuggling drugs.

The Trump administration has cynically tried to cloak its boat strikes in the mantle of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—labeling the victims of these attacks as “narco-terrorists,” supposedly affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations,” which the administration characterizes as the “‘al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”

But the “war” framing for the boat bombings is a sham. Although President Donald Trump has continued to wage the post-9/11 forever war, his faux war of the maritime strikes represents a frightening new development that is distinct from what came before. For Congress, though, the solution remains the same: firm action to curtail executive military adventurism.

The conflicts that made up —launched in response to the 9/11 attacks—had at the outset a cognizable legal foundation in both international and domestic law. Al Qaeda—an organized armed group—launched an armed attack upon the United States that killed almost 3,000 people. Acting on the basis of self-defense under international law, the United States waged an actual armed conflict with al Qaeda.

Moreover, as a matter of domestic law, Congress authorized the........

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