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Last weekend, new reporting from the Washington Post indicated that U.S. forces conducting counter-drug operations in the Caribbean fired second missiles at people who survived an initial strike and were left swimming in the water. Should the reports be confirmed, this would mark a stark departure from long-standing U.S. military practice and from the most basic prohibitions in the laws of war.

If the United States has been firing second missiles at survivors of its own strikes, we are no longer debating policy. We are describing a nation committing the very acts it once prosecuted others for. We have become what we once condemned.

There is a rule every professional military knows it cannot break: You do not kill people who can no longer fi

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