Gangs in Latin America strike me as similar to Islamists in Muslim countries. They are huge threats to the state’s monopoly on violence, and the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets.
In Bangladesh there was a terrorist attack in 2016 in a nicer part of Dhaka popular with expatriates: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50570243. I was very worried the country would descend into the situation you see in Pakistan where the state has a questionable level of control over the country. But the military mounted an extreme response against the Islamists, killing hundreds of Islamists. So far, there hasn’t been any significant terrorist attacks in the country since.
This may not be a viable strategy in places like Afghanistan, where you have a radicalized population with a deep well of potential combatants. But it seems to be a viable strategy somewhere that there’s a finite supply of potential combatants who are willing to die for the cause.
> the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets.
The United States isn't the world police. We have both a mixed track record of military engagements with similar non-state targets, and a poor track record of long term disruption of the drug trade. The drug cartels are better funded, better trained, and better connected than terrorist organizations. I wouldn't put money on this turning out well over a twenty year period. Our military budget is extensive, but the resources are still finite. Let's spend them defending ourselves and allies from the type of state actors we are effective against and find another solution to drug trafficking.
The fact that the cartels are better funded, better trained, and better connected than terrorist organizations is a reason to treat them as quasi-state actors rather than merely criminals.
And I agree the U.S. isn’t the world police. But the cartels are having negative effects in the U.S., not only in Latin America. And it’s not just drugs. They are involved in human trafficking on the border, and have expanded into other areas like supplying illegal construction labor.
The war on drugs was prosecuted through law enforcement means inside the U.S., focused on controlling drugs. This would be executed through military means with the goal of eliminating organizations. Ideally like a combination of the war on ISIS m and the war on the italian mafia.
> The war on drugs was prosecuted through law enforcement means inside the U.S., focused on controlling drugs.
That isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.
Plenty of Latin American countries collaborated on this with the United States and there were DEA personnel in many of those countries, some stationed permanently, others on shorter tours mainly involved in educating local LE. In Colombia for instance your chances of being interviewed by US DEA officer when leaving the country were pretty good. Even today they have plenty of representation outside of the USA:
Wars on drugs are basically fighting laws of economics themselves. The only option that actually works is legislation & regulation. Why we think that we can't regulate cocaine the way we regulate alcohol, weed, or cigarettes is beyond me.
Make seasonal work permits easy to get and make it easy for people to leave, instead of the current IIRIRA mandatory 10 year bar which incentives people to stay in the black economy.
Or if you're Trump, just fire missiles at things. For all you know some of the people killed on that boat were victims of trafficking themselves.
Ask someone else. I believe that labor should have the same free movement privileges as capital, so that the provider of said labor can maximize their economic opportunity.
No kudos for falsely putting words in my mouth. Every time I think something's beneath you you manage to surprise me.
It's a simple concept: to the extent that capital is allowed to move freely across borders, so should labor. That doesn't argue for the abolition of nations of borders, but the removal of unecessary friction on natural market flows.
This is completely wrong, at least for the crime organizations in Mexico. They are not a real threat to the state, and they are not similar to terrorists, they don't chant "death to America". What made the gangs in Mexico violent was the combination of bad law enforcement departments and extrajudicial killings.
The best that can come out of this is that Maduro is removed. Otherwise you are just creating more and more hate towards the USA.
Just doesn't seem very democratic, very American, very value based to go around blowing up people rather than, say, letting the coast guard do their job (interdict or track then arrest), which they do very well.
Also it's gruesome as fuck & deeply below us for the Secretary of State / National Security Advisor / Archivist of the USA to be posting snuff flicks. It's highly disturbing that Americans would be tuning in to extrajudicial murder by the government, that the administration is sending a message that just killing whomever you want to is fine, not just fine, but evening entertainment & something to cheer about. (So long as your president makes a national emergency declaration to declare whomever you want enemy combatants first. See: Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terroristshttps://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/desi... ).
This is all a particularly low point, that removes a lot of basic stops in America & cuts the standard for the rest of the world a whole lot for just killing whomever is in power feels like killing. Have some fucking morals & respect. There's no practical limits here, this is all made up. Way way way down the priority list, this is also absurdly ghastly expensive, and wasting our military doing more pointless shit instead of actually preparing for useful defense of the nation.
Killing foreign actors who threaten harm inside the country is both highly moral,[1] and a core function of government. The U.S. federal government was blowing up threatening foreigners at sea long before it was providing social security or healthcare.[2] As to the Coast Guard, simply stopping the boats obviously isn’t working, because the power of the cartels has continued to grow.
The principle of proportionality comes to mind. Added to the fact that this admin has no respect for due process or providing a modicrum of info or evidence for anything else domestically let alone anything that occurs in foreign lands or waters. Is the penalty for trafficking cocaine in the US death by the way? How about the names of these dead people? I vaguely recall Obama era drone strikes providing names of the targets at least.
A bit amusing that you reference the Barbary wars, where an "anti-Christian" (aka anti-organized religion) president Jefferson had the decency to go with John Adams to meet with the ambassad of Tripoli in order to understand what the fuck kind of justification they had for kidnapping American ships and sailors. The ambassador succinctly informed them that it was their right as "it is written in the Koran." [0]
Contrast this with an evangelist boosted admin with a serial adulterer Secretary of Defense (or is he now officially called the Secretary of War?) drunkenly shouting "Kill all Muslims" in a bar [1] or adrenaline tweeting the latest wacko shit from his weird ass pastor.
> The principle of proportionality comes to mind. Added to the fact that this admin has no respect for due process or providing a modicrum of info or evidence for anything else domestically let alone anything that occurs in foreign lands or waters. Is the penalty for trafficking cocaine in the US death by the way?
You’re mixing up concepts from two completely different legal domains. It doesn’t matter what the domestic criminal penalty is for drug trafficking, or what due process requires for imposing such a penalty, because those are domestic law concepts that simply do not apply to foreigners in international waters.
In general, non-state combatants are entitled to very few rights under the law of war compared to actual soldiers. https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/an-uncivil-war-g... (“In relation to the ‘bushwhacker’ Dr. Lieber concluded airily that ‘the importance of writing on this subject is much diminished by the fact that the soldier generally decides these cases for himself. The most disciplined soldiers will execute on the spot an armed and murderous prowler found where he could have no business as a peaceful citizen.’”).
You've missed the point. The admin does not feel obligated to provide any evidence that the dead people are "non-state combatants". You've forfeited any right to talk about legality when the admin can't be bothered to provide any evidence that it is categorizing the people that it's killed correctly.
Trump is an untrustworthy liar. It is more reasonable to assume the boat was full of migrants on a human smuggling run than anything to do with drugs.
Everyone involved in this will eventually need pardons. But this abuse will get much worse before that. The same arguments they use today can be used for extrajudicial murder on land, foreign and domestic. It's just a matter of degree and time.
To be fair, the US governments of the last 25 years have all been contributing to the current state of affairs in terms of eroding the rule of (international) law.
Which is all the more reason to speak out against it vociferously and absolutely, rather than caveat it with “even though our government has been doing this for the past quarter century”. Let’s not aid in the barbarism.
The US used to post videos of ISIS being blown up for propaganda purposes since ISIS loved to release their own snuff flicks. The cartels also love video propaganda. Venezuela is an actual enemy of the US, it just hasn't sunk in. They have now had two elected presidents that Maduro refused to allow into power. Maduro's administration is working with the cartels. He himself has profited from drug cartels. At this point it's being dishonest to mischaracterize Venezuelan cartels as simply just low level criminals when they are working with the occupied Venezuelan government.
Therefore this falls into operations presidents have the power to do. Was it democratic when the US bombed ISIS? I don't know what you mean by democratic. Should there be a vote before every bombing? Should a (un-elected, mind you) judge sign off on targeted strikes before they happen?
This is an amazingly frightening comment. An ever expanding definition of "well it is better to just treat them as military targets" enabling the military to pursue unilateral mass death. And this follows decades of utterly disastrous strategy targeting terror organizations in this manner (who at least have an actual goal of killing civilians).
You are one small step away from "gangs in US cities strike me as similar to..." and the US military just murdering US citizens on US soil based on unreviewed designations and classified intelligence.
There’s two different issues. First, can it work? Can you successfully defeat dangerous quasi-state actors by killing enough of them. I think the answer is “yes,” based on the experience of various moderate Muslim countries with Islamist groups, and the US’s experience with ISIS. My comment is directed to this issue.
Second, can the U.S. constitutionally pursue military tactics against cartels? The answer is “sometimes.” The U.S. can pursue military responses against non-citizens in international water or foreign territory, as was the case here. Contrary to your assertion, it’s not a “small step away” from pursuing military action against “US citizens on U.S. soil.” It’s a very bright line, that’s been pretty easy to enforce for the 200+ years since Jefferson sent the U.S. navy to blow up the Barbary Pirates.
The number of "bright lines" that extremely rapidly became not-so-bright in the past six months is outrageous. I've even seen you personally advocate for policies that, in my mind, cross extremely bright lines of constitutional protection. You'll have to excuse me when I don't have any confidence in your claim that there's a safe bright line that'll never be crossed. Especially when the president is already illegally deploying US troops within our own borders.
> I've even seen you personally advocate for policies that, in my mind, cross extremely bright lines of constitutional protection.
You’re talking about putative “bright line rules” in a made up version of the constitution that has four branches of government and with “independent” civil servants running the show. I’m talking about the real constitution here, as it was understood by the people who wrote it.
> Especially when the president is already illegally deploying US troops within our own borders.
Judge Breyer’s recent order in the LA case upheld that the President can deploy the National Guard to protect federal property: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/PCA%2... (“Finally, the Court’s injunctive relief in this case is narrowly tailored to address Defendants’ statutory violations. The injunction applies only to Defendants’ use of the National Guard in California, not nationally. Defendants are not required to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops currently stationed in Los Angeles, nor are they barred from using troops consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act. In fact, the Court essentially just orders Defendants to follow the (unedited) training materials that they introduced in this trial. See Task Force 51 Training Slides at 6. Thus, for example, federal troops can continue to protect federal property in a manner consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act.”).
The judge found that the troops had acted outside the scope of that authority. Much of that will certainly be overturned. For example, the judge found that the authority to protect federal property didn’t extend to “setting up protective perimeters, traffic blockades, crowd control, and the like.” (P. 42). It’s unlikely Congress intended to authorize the President to deploy the National Guard to protect federal property, but that doesn’t extend to routine measures that would be used to achieve such protection.
At best, we’ve got 300 national guard troops in Los Angeles and we’re quibbling about exactly what they can and cannot do.
Lot of weasel words in there, from 'as it was understood by the people who wrote it' (so your originalist doctrine takes precedence over SCOTUS decisions?) to quoting Breyer's allowing deployed troops to stay put as if that wasn't to provide time for the administration to appeal.
Much of that will certainly be overturned. For example, the judge found that the authority to protect federal property didn’t extend to “setting up protective perimeters, traffic blockades, crowd control, and the like.” (P. 42). It’s unlikely Congress intended to authorize the President to deploy the National Guard to protect federal property, but that doesn’t extend to routine measures that would be used to achieve such protection.
Ah, 'OK so we shouldn't have done that but now that we have you shouldn't criticize how we go about it.'
> Lot of weasel words in there, from 'as it was understood by the people who wrote it' (so your originalist doctrine takes precedence over SCOTUS decisions?)
“Emanations from penumbras” are “weasel words.” I’m just talking about what the document means. If there’s contrary Supreme Court precedent, the only way to get it overturned is to take action based on an aggressive legal position and wait to get sued. That’s just how the executive (and impact litigation generally) works.
> to quoting Breyer's allowing deployed troops to stay put as if that wasn't to provide time for the administration to appeal
The portion I quoted was not describing some temporary situation pending the appeal. It first sentence says: “ Finally, the Court’s injunctive relief in this case is narrowly tailored to address Defendants’ statutory violations.” The following portions are describing what the court views as inside the scope of the statute.
And you can criticize the conduct as much as you want, but it’s wrong to say the National Guard was “illegally deployed.” The deployment was legal and the purpose of deploying to protect federal property was legal, according to Judge Breyer. The ruling was that the troops were engaged in conduct outside the scope of the legal deployment. Even if that ruling holds up, which is unlikely, that doesn’t support the assertion that the deployment itself was illegal.
And I fully expect this "well you are using a made up version of the constitution" to appear in the comment threads for the next evil. And the next. And the next. All the way down to the one that puts a bullet in my skull.
That makes it sound like anything I'm saying is new, which it is not. I'm just expressing how people understood the constitution to operate for the first 130 years of its history. For example: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/#tab-opin... ("Montesquieu's view that the maintenance of independence as between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches was a security for the people had their full approval. Accordingly, the Constitution was so framed as to vest in the Congress all legislative powers therein granted, to vest in the President the executive power, and to vest in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress might establish the judicial power. *** The debates in the Constitutional Convention indicated an intention to create a strong Executive, and, after a controversial discussion, the executive power of the Government was vested in one person and many of his important functions were specified so as to avoid the humiliating weakness of the Congress during the Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation. *** The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws. But the President, alone and unaided, could not execute the laws. He must execute them by the assistance of subordinates. This view has since been repeatedly affirmed by this Court. As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws.").
The mid-20th century precedent was an erroneous deviation, driven in large part not by legal analysis, but FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court unless it ruled the way he wanted.
The old policy was to just pull the boats over and search them.
I wonder if there are any practical law enforcement benefits with the new “kill first, ask questions later” policy.
The article doesn’t say much about this. Like were US Coast Guard getting injured in raids, or overwhelmed by the time it took to search the boats? How many suspected boats were innocent? How many that were turned loose showed up full of coke later?
Dealing with sophisticated non-state actors on the high seas have always been somewhere between “law enforcement” and “war.” In the US it goes back to Jefferson dealing with the Barbary Pirates.
I'm pretty sure this was a distraction from the Epstein files published by congress today. All things considered, we got off cheaply. $3 for a couple of Harpoon(ish) missiles? The alternative was to invade France of bomb Poland.
11 lives and wasting advanced weaponry vs. sending the coast guard to search and seize the vessel (which, according to the article, is effectively zero risk, and often reveals the boat is not involved in the drug trade…)
"The way that we'll eliminate the illegal drug market is by killing people producing and selling drugs" has been a remarkably ineffective strategy for ages. The situations that drive people to seek substances remain. The lucrative market remains. The mechanism to produce drugs remains.
The logistics of the illegal drugs market is very resilient, sinking one boat will do nothing to stop new zombies and ODs, lol...
It's so resilient that even with all the disruptions caused by the War On Drugs drug prices are mostly stable over decades, some are even deflationary.
It just kills the mules and various low-level people or lackeys. Could also kill some of the family-people who are under the local feudal lord (drug cartel leadership)
Trump and Rubio don't seem particularly inclined to only go for the low level lackeys. "The president is very clear that he’s going to use the full power of America, the whole might of the United States, to take on and eradicate these drug cartels" and "TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder..." etc.
Not really. None of the people in that boat were meaningful. If they were, they wouldn't have been on the boat.
This is like going outside and swatting a fly. Congrats, there are a lot more out there and how much money got spent on that strike? May not scale well.
Who says they're narcoterrorists? I only see a very pixelated video that seems to be a boat. That then explodes, killing the people on it. Is this what we've come to? No due process, no collection of evidence, no reviewing of it, see if things are actually true & if any laws are broken. And then punish fitting to the crime?
I think liquidating people without due process and then being smug about it is really befitting for a civilized society, and sounds more like something that drug cartels would do.
Don't get me wrong, drug (mis)use is definitely something that needs to be addressed in a big way, but abandoning due process is not something to be celebrated I would say, and is a very, very slippery slope.
There are international treaties governing this kind of thing and of course the US is nominally bound by several different laws that should prevent unilateral action like this from the Executive. But Congress has completely abdicated so here we are.
None of those things implicate “due process,” which is a very old, very specific concept. It dates back to the Magna Carta, and refers to the legal process subjects of the sovereign are entitled to before deprivation of property rights: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/due....
Due process doesn’t and has never applied to military actions against foreigners outside the country’s jurisdiction. Indeed, I’m unaware of any western country that applies its concept of domestic legal process rights to military actions against foreign actors in international waters. Such a concept would totally turn upside down how legal systems think about the boundaries between the sphere of domestic law and law enforcement and the sphere of military action.
The War Powers Act isn't a 'get out of jail free' card to drone strike anyone on earth - it still demands that;
'The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances."
And then within 48 hours of the strikes;
the President shall submit within 48 hours to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and to the President pro tempore of the Senate a report, in writing, setting forth;
(A) the circumstances necessitating the introduction of United States Armed Forces;
(B) the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction took place; and
(C) the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement.
The ongoing Middle East and Northern Africa strikes have comically stretched the rationale of the 9/11 AUMF - but there's absolutely no authority to carry out strikes in Venezuela or in Mexico like they've been threatening to do and congress was never consulted about carrying out these strikes and of course there's no legislative or constitutional authority to do so.
It's fine that you don't think we should be bound by international law, but surely the President should be bound by our laws?
And morally, what the fuck are we doing here drone striking a small boat that could have been easily boarded and captured.
With any luck, we'll be bombing Venezuelan civilians as reprisal killings after their government has the bad judgement to murder Americans that they accused of whatever.
Try to imagine the roles reversed and realize how utterly bizarre this comment is. Just because you can perform drone strikes on parties in other countries does not make it right. If any other country would do any of this to the USA you'd be screaming blue murder but when it is the other way around you're a-ok with it.
Of course it is a due process issue. The USA does not have the legal right - even if they have the capability - to blow up random people on the planet just because they can. This is the kind of attitude that powers terrorism.
> If any other country would do any of this to the USA you'd be screaming blue murder but when it is the other way around you're a-ok with it.
I'd be totally fine with another country drone striking American gangs. They would be doing us a huge favor.
> Of course it is a due process issue. The USA does not have the legal right - even if they have the capability - to blow up random people on the planet just because they can.
"Due process" is a legal concept in Anglo law that describes the legal process required for the sovereign to deprive a subject of life, liberty, or property. The Anglo concept has no applicability to what the military can or cannot do to foreigners. And I'm not aware of any western nation having an equivalent to due process that applies to military action. The U.S. didn't provide anything resembling "due process" before it nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki or bombed Dresden.
It makes no sense to use the word "right" to describe what the U.S. as a sovereign state can or cannot do to foreign actors on foreign soil. It's just a category error. The U.S., as a sovereign state, can do whatever it wants because nations exist within a state of anarchy as to each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(international_relatio....
> I'd be totally fine with another country drone striking American gangs.
You mentioned weddings. The moment you say 'gangs' you are assuming more knowledge than you can reasonably be expected to have. Unless of course presence on a boat is proof of being in a gang.
> "Due process" is a legal concept in Anglo law that describes the legal process required for the sovereign to deprive a subject of life, liberty, or property. The Anglo concept has no applicability to what the military can or cannot do to foreigners.
You may have noticed this - or not, you're a lawyer, after all - but ordinary people have this thing called 'ethics' that gives them a hint about what is and what isn't right or permitted. It's crazy, I know, they don't even need laws to be able to do so. On average people have a pretty good idea what is right and what is wrong even when there are no bits of paper and togas involved. And bombing foreigners off the coast of their own countries or in international waters without provocation is very much wrong - at least in my book.
A good test if you think something is wrong is to try to meditate on what you would feel like if the situation were reversed. If it was you and/or your family members on a boat off the coast of your own country and some other country decided to bomb you.
> And I'm not aware of any western nation having an equivalent to due process that applies to military action.
Absent due process you exercise a thing called 'restraint'. It is why for instance Ukraine isn't indiscriminately bombing the Russians, and because they don't have it is is why the Russians are indiscriminately bombing the Ukrainians. It shows that Ukrainians value the life of people in general, whereas the Russians appear to care only about the life of people with their own citizenship (and even then, plenty of times they do not but they appear to at least have some difference).
What you can do and what you should do is a massive difference.
> The U.S. didn't provide anything resembling "due process" before it nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki or bombed Dresden.
Indeed, they did not. It may surprise you that this leads to mixed feelings in many places.
> It makes no sense to use the word "right" to describe what the U.S. as a sovereign state can or cannot do to foreign actors on foreign soil.
We are not discussing capability here. Nobody doubts the US has that capability.
> The U.S., as a sovereign state, can do whatever it wants because nations exist within a state of anarchy as to each other
International law is actually a thing, but if we for the moment ignore that what you are describing is not anarchy, it is war.
Why are you bloviating about morality of the strikes, when all he said was that there is no due process issue? Is there something preventing you from being able to distinguish between these two orthogonal ideas?
Why is anyone surprised that people who live in countries that rely on due process for punishment aren't convinced by the asterisk of "the US military doesn't have to abide due process outside of these imaginary lines"?
You can't just hand wave the due process issues away since the boat was in international waters. Rayiner's whole presumption is legally wrong as well.
We're not at war with Venezuela, and even if we were, we have laws against murder via the war crimes act (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441 - (d)(1)(D)). And surprise surprise, the law qualifies that it only applies to those taking no part in the hostilities - which you'd need some sort of due process to justify. There's no statutory requirement for "big D" Due Process, but due process also has common usage meaning that was ignored here.
You can tell how legally dubious the action was by the lawyer Marco Rubio's mealy-mouthed rationale explaining that Trump ordered the attack, that he was given the option to capture or kill and he chose to kill them. Everyone who knows better is distancing themselves from the decision chain of the attack since only the President is protected via the Supreme Court's recently invented official acts privilege.
And trolling or not, this wasn't remotely the same as US drone strikes in Afghanistan from a legal POV. At least there, we had the AUMF to rely on and provide congressional cover for the attacks - here, there's no plausible argument that drone striking a random smuggling vessel hundreds of miles from the US shore was legal. Don't take my word for it either, several people who've had to make the legal case for drone strikes also agree this was illegal according to US law and international treaties.
'Narcoterrorists' who had neither a trial nor a sentence and posed absolutely no imminent threat to anyone in the US. Why would we expect our military to actually follow International or even US laws?
"The government said that these people were bad so we simply killed them" is a bone-chillingly frightening statement. We've already got the US government saying that there are members of this gang in the US based on laughable evidence. Why not just simply have the army show up at Kilmar Garcia's house and shoot him in the head? Or bomb the building he happens to be in?
The alternative was loading up a Coast Guard ship with guys and sending them out to do an interdiction, seizing 11 men, processing them through the American legal system, incarcerating them for decades, and then eventually deporting them. I bet that costs a couple orders of magnitude more than a drone strike. Arguing cost is not compelling in the slightest.
Liberal norms are an iterative game. We can't play that game unilaterally. It is a bilateral game.
Dictators don't respect your attempts to play this game with them. If you try to play this game with them, they will use your attempts as a weapon against you.
For example, the liberal pursuit to get Ukraine to surrender its nuclear weapons. Or the liberal pursuit behind UNSC Resolution 1701, where Hezbollah pinkie promised not to keep its arms.
These people don't think like you do. They see your restraint as a weakness to exploit, not as a quality to reciprocate.
This is why I advocate only for selective bilateral liberalism as a foreign policy. Play the liberalism game with parties who want to play that game. Respect the sovereignty of democracies. Get that iterative game running.
But for dictators, at least those without a nuclear deterrent who follow a policy of cruelty, show them overwhelming power, and kill them in targeted strikes whenever the opportunity presents itself.
It didn't work in the early 2000s. But why would you use past capabilities to reason about current capabilities? The world changed, and our reasoning needs to be updated accordingly. It took 3 years and a ground invasion to find Saddam. What I am proposing is to locate Maduro and send a JDAM to him.
A more relevant case study is the war between Israel and Hezbollah, where targeting senior leadership worked. Israel killed two successive leaders until they found someone willing to sign a surrender in all but name, and ceased the rocket attacks. This would not have been possible in the early 2000s.
Yes, targeting senior leadership was exactly what the Bush administration attempted in Iraq. And they were hugely successful at it! The problem was never that the firepower was underwhelming...
"Surely if we simply assassinate the leader of a sovereign nation it will not possibly become a nightmare boondoggle. It definitely would not further destabilize the country."
Wait, only 5 members of the cartel? Where does it say that? I guess they murdered 6 innocent people (the headline says killed 11), all because they were too lazy to stop the boat?
Indeed. Claimed to be Tren de Aragua. It would be nice if US media actually checked into the existence of that gang, MS13, and any other such bogeymen before taking this (or any) administration's word on anything. At least the Journal did quote Ambassador Feeley on how it used to be done.
Someone who didn't read the briefing:
“Everything is done to preserve life,” Feeley said. “What we don’t do is just shoot up boats like Netflix likes to pretend. We can shoot in self-defense, but we rarely do that because most narcos just give up.”
Given that drug cartels aren't noted for kindness, I would think this raises the risk level for any gringo anywhere in Central or South America. Can't see them targeting the military, but everybody else better look over their shoulder. And if (when?) it escalates... Tom Clancy wrote this story back then, and (spoiler alert) the hero is the hero because he calls it off.
Interesting, the people on the boat supposedly belonged to the "Cartel de los Soles" and right after the strike, the Dominican Republic declared that cartel a terrorist organization. The cartel appears to be affiliated with the government of Venezuela.
Was this an intentional moderation decision? Most things with ICE in the title seem to remain flagged. Are the mods afraid? Or is this policy actually political?
Gangs in Latin America strike me as similar to Islamists in Muslim countries. They are huge threats to the state’s monopoly on violence, and the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets.
In Bangladesh there was a terrorist attack in 2016 in a nicer part of Dhaka popular with expatriates: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50570243. I was very worried the country would descend into the situation you see in Pakistan where the state has a questionable level of control over the country. But the military mounted an extreme response against the Islamists, killing hundreds of Islamists. So far, there hasn’t been any significant terrorist attacks in the country since.
This may not be a viable strategy in places like Afghanistan, where you have a radicalized population with a deep well of potential combatants. But it seems to be a viable strategy somewhere that there’s a finite supply of potential combatants who are willing to die for the cause.
> the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets.
The United States isn't the world police. We have both a mixed track record of military engagements with similar non-state targets, and a poor track record of long term disruption of the drug trade. The drug cartels are better funded, better trained, and better connected than terrorist organizations. I wouldn't put money on this turning out well over a twenty year period. Our military budget is extensive, but the resources are still finite. Let's spend them defending ourselves and allies from the type of state actors we are effective against and find another solution to drug trafficking.
The fact that the cartels are better funded, better trained, and better connected than terrorist organizations is a reason to treat them as quasi-state actors rather than merely criminals.
And I agree the U.S. isn’t the world police. But the cartels are having negative effects in the U.S., not only in Latin America. And it’s not just drugs. They are involved in human trafficking on the border, and have expanded into other areas like supplying illegal construction labor.
Okay, so "War on Drugs" 2.0 then.
Because that's worked out so well the last time...
The war on drugs was prosecuted through law enforcement means inside the U.S., focused on controlling drugs. This would be executed through military means with the goal of eliminating organizations. Ideally like a combination of the war on ISIS m and the war on the italian mafia.
> The war on drugs was prosecuted through law enforcement means inside the U.S., focused on controlling drugs.
That isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.
Plenty of Latin American countries collaborated on this with the United States and there were DEA personnel in many of those countries, some stationed permanently, others on shorter tours mainly involved in educating local LE. In Colombia for instance your chances of being interviewed by US DEA officer when leaving the country were pretty good. Even today they have plenty of representation outside of the USA:
https://www.dea.gov/foreign-offices/north-and-central-americ...
First, the war on drugs did have spec ops operations against cartels: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snowcap
Second, there's no reason to trust that using the military will work out better: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/14/fort_bragg_cartel_set...
Wars on drugs are basically fighting laws of economics themselves. The only option that actually works is legislation & regulation. Why we think that we can't regulate cocaine the way we regulate alcohol, weed, or cigarettes is beyond me.
So what do we do about cartels smuggling illegal labor into Arizona to work on construction projects?
Make seasonal work permits easy to get and make it easy for people to leave, instead of the current IIRIRA mandatory 10 year bar which incentives people to stay in the black economy.
Or if you're Trump, just fire missiles at things. For all you know some of the people killed on that boat were victims of trafficking themselves.
What’s a solution that doesn’t involve adding sub-market price foreign labor?
Ask someone else. I believe that labor should have the same free movement privileges as capital, so that the provider of said labor can maximize their economic opportunity.
Well kudos for being honest that you don't believe in nations or borders.
No kudos for falsely putting words in my mouth. Every time I think something's beneath you you manage to surprise me.
It's a simple concept: to the extent that capital is allowed to move freely across borders, so should labor. That doesn't argue for the abolition of nations of borders, but the removal of unecessary friction on natural market flows.
Mandate E-verify with high penalties for employers & a fast remedy track for false negatives.
We should subsidize that.
ISIS was in a declared war with 60 countries. Some dudes in a boat are not the same thing.
This is completely wrong, at least for the crime organizations in Mexico. They are not a real threat to the state, and they are not similar to terrorists, they don't chant "death to America". What made the gangs in Mexico violent was the combination of bad law enforcement departments and extrajudicial killings.
The best that can come out of this is that Maduro is removed. Otherwise you are just creating more and more hate towards the USA.
Just doesn't seem very democratic, very American, very value based to go around blowing up people rather than, say, letting the coast guard do their job (interdict or track then arrest), which they do very well.
Also it's gruesome as fuck & deeply below us for the Secretary of State / National Security Advisor / Archivist of the USA to be posting snuff flicks. It's highly disturbing that Americans would be tuning in to extrajudicial murder by the government, that the administration is sending a message that just killing whomever you want to is fine, not just fine, but evening entertainment & something to cheer about. (So long as your president makes a national emergency declaration to declare whomever you want enemy combatants first. See: Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/desi... ).
This is all a particularly low point, that removes a lot of basic stops in America & cuts the standard for the rest of the world a whole lot for just killing whomever is in power feels like killing. Have some fucking morals & respect. There's no practical limits here, this is all made up. Way way way down the priority list, this is also absurdly ghastly expensive, and wasting our military doing more pointless shit instead of actually preparing for useful defense of the nation.
Killing foreign actors who threaten harm inside the country is both highly moral,[1] and a core function of government. The U.S. federal government was blowing up threatening foreigners at sea long before it was providing social security or healthcare.[2] As to the Coast Guard, simply stopping the boats obviously isn’t working, because the power of the cartels has continued to grow.
[1] https://youtu.be/hXlZTdAN-Hc?si=jPOP11QXAlUlYVxk
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
The principle of proportionality comes to mind. Added to the fact that this admin has no respect for due process or providing a modicrum of info or evidence for anything else domestically let alone anything that occurs in foreign lands or waters. Is the penalty for trafficking cocaine in the US death by the way? How about the names of these dead people? I vaguely recall Obama era drone strikes providing names of the targets at least.
A bit amusing that you reference the Barbary wars, where an "anti-Christian" (aka anti-organized religion) president Jefferson had the decency to go with John Adams to meet with the ambassad of Tripoli in order to understand what the fuck kind of justification they had for kidnapping American ships and sailors. The ambassador succinctly informed them that it was their right as "it is written in the Koran." [0]
Contrast this with an evangelist boosted admin with a serial adulterer Secretary of Defense (or is he now officially called the Secretary of War?) drunkenly shouting "Kill all Muslims" in a bar [1] or adrenaline tweeting the latest wacko shit from his weird ass pastor.
[0] https://www.city-journal.org/article/jefferson-versus-the-mu...
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secre...
> The principle of proportionality comes to mind. Added to the fact that this admin has no respect for due process or providing a modicrum of info or evidence for anything else domestically let alone anything that occurs in foreign lands or waters. Is the penalty for trafficking cocaine in the US death by the way?
You’re mixing up concepts from two completely different legal domains. It doesn’t matter what the domestic criminal penalty is for drug trafficking, or what due process requires for imposing such a penalty, because those are domestic law concepts that simply do not apply to foreigners in international waters.
In general, non-state combatants are entitled to very few rights under the law of war compared to actual soldiers. https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/an-uncivil-war-g... (“In relation to the ‘bushwhacker’ Dr. Lieber concluded airily that ‘the importance of writing on this subject is much diminished by the fact that the soldier generally decides these cases for himself. The most disciplined soldiers will execute on the spot an armed and murderous prowler found where he could have no business as a peaceful citizen.’”).
You've missed the point. The admin does not feel obligated to provide any evidence that the dead people are "non-state combatants". You've forfeited any right to talk about legality when the admin can't be bothered to provide any evidence that it is categorizing the people that it's killed correctly.
Trump is an untrustworthy liar. It is more reasonable to assume the boat was full of migrants on a human smuggling run than anything to do with drugs.
Everyone involved in this will eventually need pardons. But this abuse will get much worse before that. The same arguments they use today can be used for extrajudicial murder on land, foreign and domestic. It's just a matter of degree and time.
https://www.justsecurity.org/119982/legal-issues-military-at...
To be fair, the US governments of the last 25 years have all been contributing to the current state of affairs in terms of eroding the rule of (international) law.
Which is all the more reason to speak out against it vociferously and absolutely, rather than caveat it with “even though our government has been doing this for the past quarter century”. Let’s not aid in the barbarism.
The US used to post videos of ISIS being blown up for propaganda purposes since ISIS loved to release their own snuff flicks. The cartels also love video propaganda. Venezuela is an actual enemy of the US, it just hasn't sunk in. They have now had two elected presidents that Maduro refused to allow into power. Maduro's administration is working with the cartels. He himself has profited from drug cartels. At this point it's being dishonest to mischaracterize Venezuelan cartels as simply just low level criminals when they are working with the occupied Venezuelan government.
Therefore this falls into operations presidents have the power to do. Was it democratic when the US bombed ISIS? I don't know what you mean by democratic. Should there be a vote before every bombing? Should a (un-elected, mind you) judge sign off on targeted strikes before they happen?
This is an amazingly frightening comment. An ever expanding definition of "well it is better to just treat them as military targets" enabling the military to pursue unilateral mass death. And this follows decades of utterly disastrous strategy targeting terror organizations in this manner (who at least have an actual goal of killing civilians).
You are one small step away from "gangs in US cities strike me as similar to..." and the US military just murdering US citizens on US soil based on unreviewed designations and classified intelligence.
There’s two different issues. First, can it work? Can you successfully defeat dangerous quasi-state actors by killing enough of them. I think the answer is “yes,” based on the experience of various moderate Muslim countries with Islamist groups, and the US’s experience with ISIS. My comment is directed to this issue.
Second, can the U.S. constitutionally pursue military tactics against cartels? The answer is “sometimes.” The U.S. can pursue military responses against non-citizens in international water or foreign territory, as was the case here. Contrary to your assertion, it’s not a “small step away” from pursuing military action against “US citizens on U.S. soil.” It’s a very bright line, that’s been pretty easy to enforce for the 200+ years since Jefferson sent the U.S. navy to blow up the Barbary Pirates.
The number of "bright lines" that extremely rapidly became not-so-bright in the past six months is outrageous. I've even seen you personally advocate for policies that, in my mind, cross extremely bright lines of constitutional protection. You'll have to excuse me when I don't have any confidence in your claim that there's a safe bright line that'll never be crossed. Especially when the president is already illegally deploying US troops within our own borders.
> I've even seen you personally advocate for policies that, in my mind, cross extremely bright lines of constitutional protection.
You’re talking about putative “bright line rules” in a made up version of the constitution that has four branches of government and with “independent” civil servants running the show. I’m talking about the real constitution here, as it was understood by the people who wrote it.
> Especially when the president is already illegally deploying US troops within our own borders.
Judge Breyer’s recent order in the LA case upheld that the President can deploy the National Guard to protect federal property: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/PCA%2... (“Finally, the Court’s injunctive relief in this case is narrowly tailored to address Defendants’ statutory violations. The injunction applies only to Defendants’ use of the National Guard in California, not nationally. Defendants are not required to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops currently stationed in Los Angeles, nor are they barred from using troops consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act. In fact, the Court essentially just orders Defendants to follow the (unedited) training materials that they introduced in this trial. See Task Force 51 Training Slides at 6. Thus, for example, federal troops can continue to protect federal property in a manner consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act.”).
The judge found that the troops had acted outside the scope of that authority. Much of that will certainly be overturned. For example, the judge found that the authority to protect federal property didn’t extend to “setting up protective perimeters, traffic blockades, crowd control, and the like.” (P. 42). It’s unlikely Congress intended to authorize the President to deploy the National Guard to protect federal property, but that doesn’t extend to routine measures that would be used to achieve such protection.
At best, we’ve got 300 national guard troops in Los Angeles and we’re quibbling about exactly what they can and cannot do.
Lot of weasel words in there, from 'as it was understood by the people who wrote it' (so your originalist doctrine takes precedence over SCOTUS decisions?) to quoting Breyer's allowing deployed troops to stay put as if that wasn't to provide time for the administration to appeal.
Much of that will certainly be overturned. For example, the judge found that the authority to protect federal property didn’t extend to “setting up protective perimeters, traffic blockades, crowd control, and the like.” (P. 42). It’s unlikely Congress intended to authorize the President to deploy the National Guard to protect federal property, but that doesn’t extend to routine measures that would be used to achieve such protection.
Ah, 'OK so we shouldn't have done that but now that we have you shouldn't criticize how we go about it.'
> Lot of weasel words in there, from 'as it was understood by the people who wrote it' (so your originalist doctrine takes precedence over SCOTUS decisions?)
“Emanations from penumbras” are “weasel words.” I’m just talking about what the document means. If there’s contrary Supreme Court precedent, the only way to get it overturned is to take action based on an aggressive legal position and wait to get sued. That’s just how the executive (and impact litigation generally) works.
> to quoting Breyer's allowing deployed troops to stay put as if that wasn't to provide time for the administration to appeal
The portion I quoted was not describing some temporary situation pending the appeal. It first sentence says: “ Finally, the Court’s injunctive relief in this case is narrowly tailored to address Defendants’ statutory violations.” The following portions are describing what the court views as inside the scope of the statute.
And you can criticize the conduct as much as you want, but it’s wrong to say the National Guard was “illegally deployed.” The deployment was legal and the purpose of deploying to protect federal property was legal, according to Judge Breyer. The ruling was that the troops were engaged in conduct outside the scope of the legal deployment. Even if that ruling holds up, which is unlikely, that doesn’t support the assertion that the deployment itself was illegal.
And I fully expect this "well you are using a made up version of the constitution" to appear in the comment threads for the next evil. And the next. And the next. All the way down to the one that puts a bullet in my skull.
That makes it sound like anything I'm saying is new, which it is not. I'm just expressing how people understood the constitution to operate for the first 130 years of its history. For example: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/#tab-opin... ("Montesquieu's view that the maintenance of independence as between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches was a security for the people had their full approval. Accordingly, the Constitution was so framed as to vest in the Congress all legislative powers therein granted, to vest in the President the executive power, and to vest in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress might establish the judicial power. *** The debates in the Constitutional Convention indicated an intention to create a strong Executive, and, after a controversial discussion, the executive power of the Government was vested in one person and many of his important functions were specified so as to avoid the humiliating weakness of the Congress during the Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation. *** The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws. But the President, alone and unaided, could not execute the laws. He must execute them by the assistance of subordinates. This view has since been repeatedly affirmed by this Court. As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws.").
The mid-20th century precedent was an erroneous deviation, driven in large part not by legal analysis, but FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court unless it ruled the way he wanted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
> the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets
Worked out great for the Philippines…
"You must not fight too often with one enemy or you will teach him all your art of war." - Napoleon
I’m 99% sure that was Sun Tzu…
It was Napoleon, but he was paraphrasing Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
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The old policy was to just pull the boats over and search them.
I wonder if there are any practical law enforcement benefits with the new “kill first, ask questions later” policy.
The article doesn’t say much about this. Like were US Coast Guard getting injured in raids, or overwhelmed by the time it took to search the boats? How many suspected boats were innocent? How many that were turned loose showed up full of coke later?
Dealing with sophisticated non-state actors on the high seas have always been somewhere between “law enforcement” and “war.” In the US it goes back to Jefferson dealing with the Barbary Pirates.
I'm pretty sure this was a distraction from the Epstein files published by congress today. All things considered, we got off cheaply. $3 for a couple of Harpoon(ish) missiles? The alternative was to invade France of bomb Poland.
11 lives vs. thousands of new zombies and ODs, worth it.
11 lives and wasting advanced weaponry vs. sending the coast guard to search and seize the vessel (which, according to the article, is effectively zero risk, and often reveals the boat is not involved in the drug trade…)
"The way that we'll eliminate the illegal drug market is by killing people producing and selling drugs" has been a remarkably ineffective strategy for ages. The situations that drive people to seek substances remain. The lucrative market remains. The mechanism to produce drugs remains.
The logistics of the illegal drugs market is very resilient, sinking one boat will do nothing to stop new zombies and ODs, lol...
It's so resilient that even with all the disruptions caused by the War On Drugs drug prices are mostly stable over decades, some are even deflationary.
The ends _always_ justify the means, right?
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It just kills the mules and various low-level people or lackeys. Could also kill some of the family-people who are under the local feudal lord (drug cartel leadership)
Trump and Rubio don't seem particularly inclined to only go for the low level lackeys. "The president is very clear that he’s going to use the full power of America, the whole might of the United States, to take on and eradicate these drug cartels" and "TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder..." etc.
Not really. None of the people in that boat were meaningful. If they were, they wouldn't have been on the boat.
This is like going outside and swatting a fly. Congrats, there are a lot more out there and how much money got spent on that strike? May not scale well.
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Because this has worked so enormously well over the past 25 years.
You can't think of a good reason to be against an extrajudicial drone strike that killed 11 people?
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Who says they're narcoterrorists? I only see a very pixelated video that seems to be a boat. That then explodes, killing the people on it. Is this what we've come to? No due process, no collection of evidence, no reviewing of it, see if things are actually true & if any laws are broken. And then punish fitting to the crime?
I think liquidating people without due process and then being smug about it is really befitting for a civilized society, and sounds more like something that drug cartels would do.
Don't get me wrong, drug (mis)use is definitely something that needs to be addressed in a big way, but abandoning due process is not something to be celebrated I would say, and is a very, very slippery slope.
“Due process” isn’t a concept that applies to foreign actors in international waters. We don’t have a world government with worldwide legal rights.
There are international treaties governing this kind of thing and of course the US is nominally bound by several different laws that should prevent unilateral action like this from the Executive. But Congress has completely abdicated so here we are.
None of those things implicate “due process,” which is a very old, very specific concept. It dates back to the Magna Carta, and refers to the legal process subjects of the sovereign are entitled to before deprivation of property rights: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/due....
Due process doesn’t and has never applied to military actions against foreigners outside the country’s jurisdiction. Indeed, I’m unaware of any western country that applies its concept of domestic legal process rights to military actions against foreign actors in international waters. Such a concept would totally turn upside down how legal systems think about the boundaries between the sphere of domestic law and law enforcement and the sphere of military action.
As to Congressional abdication, you might have an argument that we need some sort of Congressional sanction, as Jefferson obtained against the Barbary Pirates: https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers.... But that ship sailed a long time ago. Under the War Powers Resolution, the President is authorized to basically shoot first, ask for permission later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
The War Powers Act isn't a 'get out of jail free' card to drone strike anyone on earth - it still demands that;
'The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances."
And then within 48 hours of the strikes;
the President shall submit within 48 hours to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and to the President pro tempore of the Senate a report, in writing, setting forth;
(A) the circumstances necessitating the introduction of United States Armed Forces;
(B) the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction took place; and
(C) the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement.
The ongoing Middle East and Northern Africa strikes have comically stretched the rationale of the 9/11 AUMF - but there's absolutely no authority to carry out strikes in Venezuela or in Mexico like they've been threatening to do and congress was never consulted about carrying out these strikes and of course there's no legislative or constitutional authority to do so.
It's fine that you don't think we should be bound by international law, but surely the President should be bound by our laws?
And morally, what the fuck are we doing here drone striking a small boat that could have been easily boarded and captured.
Might makes right after all.
With any luck, we'll be bombing Venezuelan civilians as reprisal killings after their government has the bad judgement to murder Americans that they accused of whatever.
Did you know that sometimes they get it wrong and it turns out the boat isn't a drugs carrying vessel at all?
Ok, they're Venezuelans, so not really people, but still. /s
Sure, just like drone strikes sometimes blow up weddings in Afghanistan. Still not a due process issue.
Try to imagine the roles reversed and realize how utterly bizarre this comment is. Just because you can perform drone strikes on parties in other countries does not make it right. If any other country would do any of this to the USA you'd be screaming blue murder but when it is the other way around you're a-ok with it.
Of course it is a due process issue. The USA does not have the legal right - even if they have the capability - to blow up random people on the planet just because they can. This is the kind of attitude that powers terrorism.
> If any other country would do any of this to the USA you'd be screaming blue murder but when it is the other way around you're a-ok with it.
I'd be totally fine with another country drone striking American gangs. They would be doing us a huge favor.
> Of course it is a due process issue. The USA does not have the legal right - even if they have the capability - to blow up random people on the planet just because they can.
"Due process" is a legal concept in Anglo law that describes the legal process required for the sovereign to deprive a subject of life, liberty, or property. The Anglo concept has no applicability to what the military can or cannot do to foreigners. And I'm not aware of any western nation having an equivalent to due process that applies to military action. The U.S. didn't provide anything resembling "due process" before it nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki or bombed Dresden.
It makes no sense to use the word "right" to describe what the U.S. as a sovereign state can or cannot do to foreign actors on foreign soil. It's just a category error. The U.S., as a sovereign state, can do whatever it wants because nations exist within a state of anarchy as to each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(international_relatio....
> I'd be totally fine with another country drone striking American gangs.
You mentioned weddings. The moment you say 'gangs' you are assuming more knowledge than you can reasonably be expected to have. Unless of course presence on a boat is proof of being in a gang.
> "Due process" is a legal concept in Anglo law that describes the legal process required for the sovereign to deprive a subject of life, liberty, or property. The Anglo concept has no applicability to what the military can or cannot do to foreigners.
You may have noticed this - or not, you're a lawyer, after all - but ordinary people have this thing called 'ethics' that gives them a hint about what is and what isn't right or permitted. It's crazy, I know, they don't even need laws to be able to do so. On average people have a pretty good idea what is right and what is wrong even when there are no bits of paper and togas involved. And bombing foreigners off the coast of their own countries or in international waters without provocation is very much wrong - at least in my book.
A good test if you think something is wrong is to try to meditate on what you would feel like if the situation were reversed. If it was you and/or your family members on a boat off the coast of your own country and some other country decided to bomb you.
> And I'm not aware of any western nation having an equivalent to due process that applies to military action.
Absent due process you exercise a thing called 'restraint'. It is why for instance Ukraine isn't indiscriminately bombing the Russians, and because they don't have it is is why the Russians are indiscriminately bombing the Ukrainians. It shows that Ukrainians value the life of people in general, whereas the Russians appear to care only about the life of people with their own citizenship (and even then, plenty of times they do not but they appear to at least have some difference).
What you can do and what you should do is a massive difference.
> The U.S. didn't provide anything resembling "due process" before it nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki or bombed Dresden.
Indeed, they did not. It may surprise you that this leads to mixed feelings in many places.
> It makes no sense to use the word "right" to describe what the U.S. as a sovereign state can or cannot do to foreign actors on foreign soil.
We are not discussing capability here. Nobody doubts the US has that capability.
> The U.S., as a sovereign state, can do whatever it wants because nations exist within a state of anarchy as to each other
International law is actually a thing, but if we for the moment ignore that what you are describing is not anarchy, it is war.
Why are you bloviating about morality of the strikes, when all he said was that there is no due process issue? Is there something preventing you from being able to distinguish between these two orthogonal ideas?
Why is anyone surprised that people who live in countries that rely on due process for punishment aren't convinced by the asterisk of "the US military doesn't have to abide due process outside of these imaginary lines"?
You can't just hand wave the due process issues away since the boat was in international waters. Rayiner's whole presumption is legally wrong as well.
We're not at war with Venezuela, and even if we were, we have laws against murder via the war crimes act (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441 - (d)(1)(D)). And surprise surprise, the law qualifies that it only applies to those taking no part in the hostilities - which you'd need some sort of due process to justify. There's no statutory requirement for "big D" Due Process, but due process also has common usage meaning that was ignored here.
You can tell how legally dubious the action was by the lawyer Marco Rubio's mealy-mouthed rationale explaining that Trump ordered the attack, that he was given the option to capture or kill and he chose to kill them. Everyone who knows better is distancing themselves from the decision chain of the attack since only the President is protected via the Supreme Court's recently invented official acts privilege.
Edit; Rand Paul gets it: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lxxrrcb2bg2u ,this isn't complicated.
And trolling or not, this wasn't remotely the same as US drone strikes in Afghanistan from a legal POV. At least there, we had the AUMF to rely on and provide congressional cover for the attacks - here, there's no plausible argument that drone striking a random smuggling vessel hundreds of miles from the US shore was legal. Don't take my word for it either, several people who've had to make the legal case for drone strikes also agree this was illegal according to US law and international treaties.
https://www.justsecurity.org/119982/legal-issues-military-at...
'Narcoterrorists' who had neither a trial nor a sentence and posed absolutely no imminent threat to anyone in the US. Why would we expect our military to actually follow International or even US laws?
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> If they’re sending drugs to our streets, they do pose an imminent threat.
What about the ppl in the US receiving, transporting and selling
Are they imminent threats too ?
> or gang violence?
We are doing gangs now too ?
What about 100? What about 10,000? 1,000,000?
"The government said that these people were bad so we simply killed them" is a bone-chillingly frightening statement. We've already got the US government saying that there are members of this gang in the US based on laughable evidence. Why not just simply have the army show up at Kilmar Garcia's house and shoot him in the head? Or bomb the building he happens to be in?
A horrifying future.
> A horrifying future.
Depending on where you live, a horrifying present.
Imagine if we had done this to a Chinese boat in international waters.
Not all narco terrorists are the same
As someone previously very deeply involved on the ground with a lot of drone strikes, the type we do in the US are NOT cheap.
The alternative was loading up a Coast Guard ship with guys and sending them out to do an interdiction, seizing 11 men, processing them through the American legal system, incarcerating them for decades, and then eventually deporting them. I bet that costs a couple orders of magnitude more than a drone strike. Arguing cost is not compelling in the slightest.
This is the same excuse when cops go blazin' in - shoot first ask questions. Look up Amadou Diallo (1999) if you were not around then.
What about due process?
"Due process for me, not for thee"
Why would we prosecute people in international waters?
I guess the drone strike was fine though! /s
Human rights, law & order, war crimes
> Swat enough flies and they’ll alter their behavior.
They will, but flies are stupid. People are not, and they will not necessarily alter their behavior in a direction that you prefer.
These are not flies, these are fucking human beings.
That this even needs to be said is quite incredible.
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Keeping your last sentence in mind.
That's wild.
I believe the status quo is more wild and more inhumane.
I'm not proposing another Vietnam or Iraq. I'm proposing a modern solution to an old problem, involving 100000x less death.
Worth noting: the people pushing for wars in Vietnam or Iraq weren't proposing what they became, either.
It always sounds simple, surgical, net-positive. And yet we're always willing to believe this time will be different.
That goes both ways, and means you're asking for other countries to do the same here.
You don't want that.
Liberal norms are an iterative game. We can't play that game unilaterally. It is a bilateral game.
Dictators don't respect your attempts to play this game with them. If you try to play this game with them, they will use your attempts as a weapon against you.
For example, the liberal pursuit to get Ukraine to surrender its nuclear weapons. Or the liberal pursuit behind UNSC Resolution 1701, where Hezbollah pinkie promised not to keep its arms.
These people don't think like you do. They see your restraint as a weakness to exploit, not as a quality to reciprocate.
This is why I advocate only for selective bilateral liberalism as a foreign policy. Play the liberalism game with parties who want to play that game. Respect the sovereignty of democracies. Get that iterative game running.
But for dictators, at least those without a nuclear deterrent who follow a policy of cruelty, show them overwhelming power, and kill them in targeted strikes whenever the opportunity presents itself.
"Overwhelming force" was how the Bush administration pitched Iraq. Your theory is solid, except for the fact that it doesn't work.
It didn't work in the early 2000s. But why would you use past capabilities to reason about current capabilities? The world changed, and our reasoning needs to be updated accordingly. It took 3 years and a ground invasion to find Saddam. What I am proposing is to locate Maduro and send a JDAM to him.
A more relevant case study is the war between Israel and Hezbollah, where targeting senior leadership worked. Israel killed two successive leaders until they found someone willing to sign a surrender in all but name, and ceased the rocket attacks. This would not have been possible in the early 2000s.
Yes, targeting senior leadership was exactly what the Bush administration attempted in Iraq. And they were hugely successful at it! The problem was never that the firepower was underwhelming...
"Surely if we simply assassinate the leader of a sovereign nation it will not possibly become a nightmare boondoggle. It definitely would not further destabilize the country."
Do you think the masterminds of this alleged operation were on said boat?
Wait, only 5 members of the cartel? Where does it say that? I guess they murdered 6 innocent people (the headline says killed 11), all because they were too lazy to stop the boat?
It was 11, I made a mistake. I edited my comment.
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Alleged drug vessel.
Indeed. Claimed to be Tren de Aragua. It would be nice if US media actually checked into the existence of that gang, MS13, and any other such bogeymen before taking this (or any) administration's word on anything. At least the Journal did quote Ambassador Feeley on how it used to be done.
The ambassador’s quotes are pretty damning: The boats they stop always surrender immediately, and sometimes are not cartel boats.
Maybe there was "MS 13" labeled on the side in Times New Roman.
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The people aboard certainly are. If you're ok with these people being murdered, I guess you'll be ok when it happens to you.
I liked your joke.
Who added the peppy dramatic musical score, to the video of a boat being destroyed, and people killed? WSJ?
Probably whichever PR flack in the Trump administration that released it. Making it look like something out of a movie is right up their alley.
Someone who didn't read the briefing: “Everything is done to preserve life,” Feeley said. “What we don’t do is just shoot up boats like Netflix likes to pretend. We can shoot in self-defense, but we rarely do that because most narcos just give up.”
https://archive.ph/72sLY
This a supply and demand problem, supply will continue until Americans stop needing drugs.
Maybe stop creating situations where people need the drugs in the first place?
Given that drug cartels aren't noted for kindness, I would think this raises the risk level for any gringo anywhere in Central or South America. Can't see them targeting the military, but everybody else better look over their shoulder. And if (when?) it escalates... Tom Clancy wrote this story back then, and (spoiler alert) the hero is the hero because he calls it off.
Interesting, the people on the boat supposedly belonged to the "Cartel de los Soles" and right after the strike, the Dominican Republic declared that cartel a terrorist organization. The cartel appears to be affiliated with the government of Venezuela.
Definitely one way to squeeze Maduro
Why is this random news article unflagged, while this significantly more active and tech-relevant article flagged? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106903
Was this an intentional moderation decision? Most things with ICE in the title seem to remain flagged. Are the mods afraid? Or is this policy actually political?
oil is the primary target
wag that dog