On Christmas Day, President Trump announced that the U.S. launched airstrikes in Nigeria targeting what he called “ISIS Terrorist Scum”—complete with a “MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists” sign-off.

But here’s the thing: the public record offers almost nothing about who was actually killed, what the specific targets were, or whether any civilians died.

WHAT’S GOING ON: The Pentagon released video showing at least one projectile launched from a warship, but the precise target remains unclear. AFRICOM says the strikes hit “ISIS terrorists” in Sokoto State “in coordination with Nigerian authorities.”

That’s it. No casualty breakdown, no target list, no independent verification. Just generic claims that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed.”

THE DETAILS: Nigeria’s Foreign Minister told the BBC this was a “joint operation” that “has nothing to do with a particular religion”—directly contradicting Trump’s framing that this is about protecting Christians specifically.

Nigerian President Tinubu has maintained that characterizing Nigeria as “religiously intolerant” is inaccurate, noting that Muslims have also been victimized by extremist violence. A mosque bombing on Christmas Eve killed five people—the same day Trump ordered these strikes.

WHY IT MATTERS: This follows a pattern that should make anyone deeply suspicious.

U.S. strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere have repeatedly been framed as clean counterterrorism operations—only for later reporting to reveal civilian casualties with zero accountability.

Without transparent casualty data or target information, there’s no way to independently assess whether these strikes killed combatants or amounted to extrajudicial executions. The Pentagon video shows missiles launching. It doesn’t show who they hit.

ZOOM OUT: Trump has been building toward this for months, adding Nigeria to a religious freedom violators list and the travel ban.

The stated justification—protecting Christians—oversimplifies a complex security situation that affects Nigerians of all faiths, including the mass kidnapping of students from a Catholic school and the recent mosque bombing. The framing serves Trump’s domestic narrative about Christianity under siege, regardless of the actual facts on the ground.

BOTTOM LINE: The U.S. just dropped bombs in a sovereign nation on Christmas Day based on claims we can’t verify, killing people we can’t identify, with no accountability mechanisms in sight. And the president signed off with a holiday greeting to the “dead Terrorists.”

This is what unilateral military action without transparency looks like—and history suggests we shouldn’t take the official story at face value.