In decades of war against terrorist and insurgent groups, the military and spy agencies learned that to take down a network, they had to first understand it.

在数十年打击恐怖组织和叛乱势力的战争中，军方和情报机构认识到：要摧毁一个犯罪网络，首先必须了解它。

That often meant rounding up low-level people who could lead them to more important people.

这通常意味着先抓捕底层人员，再通过他们顺藤摸瓜锁定更核心的目标。

While the United States had successes, it also made mistakes, sometimes hitting the wrong target or causing collateral damage, angering local populations and creating more opponents than were eliminated.

美国在这方面虽取得过一些成效，却也犯下不少错误——有时会误击目标或造成附带伤亡，这不仅激怒了当地民众，还使得新产生的敌人超过消灭的数量。

As a result of those errors, the United States worked to create detailed intelligence dossiers so that civilians approving the strikes could have confidence in who was being targeted and more clearly see the potential unintended consequences of a strike.

正是这些失误促使美国开始建立详尽的情报档案。这样一来，批准打击行动的文职官员能确信目标的准确性，也能更清晰地预判行动可能带来的意外后果。

But those lessons of the long war against terrorism appear to have been cast aside as the Trump administration attacks boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific that it says are carrying drugs.

然而，特朗普政府在加勒比海和东太平洋地区打击其所称的运毒船只时，似乎完全抛弃了这些从长期反恐战争中吸取的教训。

杰拉尔德·R·福特号航空母舰已于9月进入加勒比地区。

The U.S. military has killed more than 80 people since the campaign began in early September. But it does not know who specifically is being killed, and the strikes were not designed to take out high-ranking cartel leaders.

自9月初启动这项行动以来，美军已造成80多人死亡。但军方根本不清楚被击毙者的具体身份，而且这些打击行动的目标并非贩毒集团高层头目。

Instead, the military has killed, at best, low-level people, whose role in the drug trade may have been taking a payment for moving cocaine from one spot to another. (At worst, some of the people killed could have been fishermen, migrants or others who had nothing to do with the drug trade.)

相反，军方击毙的充其量只是些底层人员——他们在贩毒活动中可能仅负责转运可卡因并获取少量报酬。（更糟糕的是，部分遇难者或许是渔民、移民等与贩毒活动毫无关联的无辜人员。）

“Traditionally, our counternarcotics efforts have always been targeted at the head of the snake,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “This is obviously the opposite of that. Now we’re going after the tail of the snake. We’re going after some, you know, poor ex-fishermen who took 300 bucks to run a load of cocaine to Trinidad.”

“传统上，我们的禁毒行动向来直击蛇头，瞄准贩毒集团的核心人物，”美国众议院情报委员会民主党领袖、康涅狄格州众议员吉姆·海姆斯表示。“而现在的做法显然背道而驰。我们不去打蛇头，反而盯着蛇尾不放。抓捕的都是些贫苦的前渔民，他们可能收了300美元报酬就帮人把一批可卡因运往特立尼达岛。”

The strikes are also at odds with any effort to understand the cartels moving the drugs. Taking apart a network, experts said, requires capturing people and interrogating them to find out the financiers and leaders. By blowing up the boats, the United States is also destroying the intelligence and evidence.

此外，这些打击行动也不利于摸清贩毒集团的运作模式。专家指出，要瓦解一个犯罪网络，就必须抓获相关人员并进行审讯，进而揪出背后的资金提供者和头目。而美军炸毁运毒船只的同时，也毁掉了关键的情报和证据。

“If what you wanted was to stop the drug trade, obviously this isn’t what you’d be doing,” said Annie Pforzheimer, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in counternarcotics during her career. “Because you’d be capturing the people in the boats, turning them to get the next level of the organization, turning those people to the next level and getting to the top.”

“如果真的想遏制贩毒活动，显然不该采取这种做法，”前美国资深外交官安妮·普福尔茨海默说道，她的职业生涯长期专注于禁毒领域。“正确的做法是抓获船上人员，使其供出组织中层，再通过中层追查高层，最终锁定头目。”

The military knows that someone on the boats has a connection to a drug cartel, and it has some level of confidence that drugs are on the vessels, according to people familiar with the military’s classified briefings. But in most, if not all, of the strikes, the Pentagon does not know precisely whom it is killing, those people said.

据了解军方机密简报的人士透露，军方知晓船上人员与贩毒集团存在关联，且对船上载有毒品有一定把握。但他们表示，在绝大多数——甚或全部——打击行动中，五角大楼都无法确切知晓被击毙者的身份。

And Democratic lawmakers say that presents a real danger.

民主党议员称，这构成了实质性危险。

“There are two reasons you’re really super careful about this stuff,” Mr. Himes said. “One would hope that you might have some qualms about killing innocent people — there’s the moral dimension, and I’d like to believe that still matters. And then No. 2, there’s the blowback issue.”

“在这类行动中必须极度谨慎，原因有二，”海姆斯表示。“首先，人们会期待你在误杀无辜者方面有所顾虑——这涉及道德层面，而且我愿意相信道德准则至今仍有分量。其次，这还存在反噬风险。”

During America’s long fight against terrorism, the C.I.A. and the military learned that when they killed terrorism suspects, the family members of those people could become radicalized, turning against the country that had killed their brother or son.

在美国长期的反恐战争中，中央情报局和军方发现，击毙恐怖嫌疑人后，其家属可能会因此变得激进化，转而敌视杀死他们兄弟或儿子的美国。

Mr. Himes said each and every boat strike carried the same risk.

海姆斯指出，每一次打击运毒船只的行动都存在同样的风险。

“These are guys who made a bad decision to take 500 bucks to run a fast boat up to Trinidad,” Mr. Himes said. “They’re the street-corner hustlers. And if the United States is sending the signal that life doesn’t matter, that’s coming back to us, that is absolutely coming back to us.”

“这些人不过是为500美元的酬劳，做出驾驶快艇前往特立尼达的糟糕决定，”海姆斯说。“他们就像是街头小混混。如果美国传递出‘生命毫无价值’的信号，这种负面影响一定会反噬我们，绝对如此。”

Supporters of the strikes have noted that overhead surveillance by both drones and satellites has improved in recent years and that there is less chance of collateral damage from striking boats at sea compared with targets on land.

支持这类打击行动的人士称，近年来无人机和卫星的空中监控技术不断进步，相较于打击陆地目标，袭击海上船只造成附带伤亡的概率更低。

Trump administration officials have also pointed out that their Democratic predecessors approved counterterrorism strikes even when they were unsure exactly who was being killed.

特朗普政府官员还指出，其前任民主党政府在反恐行动中，即便不确定被打击者的具体身份，也会批准行动。

During the Obama administration, the C.I.A. conducted antiterrorism strikes in cases in which the United States did not know specifically whom it was killing. Instead, the strikes were based on intelligence assessments from a “pattern of life” and other information that showed connections between the targeted people and known terrorists.

奥巴马政府时期，中情局曾实施过在不明具体目标身份的情况下发动的反恐打击。这些行动基于情报评估，通过“生活规律”及其他信息显示目标人员与已知恐怖分子的关联性。

These attacks were called signature strikes because they were based on actions that looked like terrorism, or had a terrorism “signature,” but were not backed up by specific knowledge about who was at a site being targeted or what exactly they might have been planning.

这类袭击被称为特征打击，因其依据是目标人员的行为符合恐怖主义行为，或是带有恐怖主义“特征”，但美方并不确切知晓目标地点人员的身份，也不清楚他们具体在策划什么行动。

The term, however, was tainted from the beginning. Critics maintained that strikes on large groups of unidentified people suspected of being militants did little to stop terrorist attacks but risked mistakes that could lead to civilian deaths and turn local populations against the United States.

然而，这一术语从一开始就蒙上污点。批评人士认为，针对大批身份不明的疑似武装分子实施打击，对阻止恐怖袭击收效甚微，反而容易出错导致平民死亡，进而引发当地民众对美国的敌视。

Because of the controversy, restrictions were placed on signature strikes. And when the Obama administration later began targeting militants in Yemen whose identify they did not know, it started calling the operations “terrorist attack disruption strikes.”

迫于争议，“特征打击”受到了限制。后来奥巴马政府开始打击也门境内身份不明的武装分子时，便将这类行动改称为“恐怖袭击阻断打击”。

While there are some similarities between the boat strikes and the old signature strikes, the military has rejected the idea that the attacks on the boats are signature strikes. In briefings with members of Congress, military officers have asserted that they are confident there are drugs on the boats — and that the drugs are the real target of the attacks.

尽管此次打击运毒船只的行动与以往的“特征打击”存在一些相似之处，但军方否认这些海上打击属于“特征打击”。在向国会议员做简报时，军方官员坚称，他们确信船上载有毒品，而这些毒品才是打击行动的真正目标。

But lawmakers say that means the people on the boats are, in effect, collateral damage.

但议员们表示，这意味着船上人员实际上沦为了附带伤亡。

“They told us it is not a signature strike, because it’s not just about pattern of life, but it’s also not like they know every individual person on the boats,” said Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

“军方告诉我们，这不是特征打击，因为它不仅依据生活规律。但他们也并非认识船上的每一个人，”加利福尼亚州民主党众议员、众议院军事委员会成员萨拉·雅各布斯说。

Ms. Jacobs said she believed the strikes were wrong.

雅各布斯明确表示，她认为这些打击行动是错误的。

“I didn’t hear any evidence that convinced me that these weren’t extrajudicial killings,” she said.

“我没有听到任何证据能让我相信，这些行动不属于法外处决，”她说。