> Would it be as acceptable for China to start doing this?
Xi’s China has been ramming vessels in the South China Sea for a while now [1]. In 2019, “a Philippine fishing boat anchored in Reed Bank in the South China Sea, sank after it was rammed by a Chinese vessel,” its crew surviving because they were “later rescued by a Vietnamese fishing vessel” [2]. (“In July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled on a claim brought against China by the Philippines under UNCLOS, ruling in favor of the Philippines on almost every count. While China is a signatory to the treaty establishing the tribunal, it refuses to accept the court’s authority” [3].)
Russia, meanwhile, conducts extrajudicial atrocities in Africa through Wagner [4].
The simple answer is the great powers are broadly and consistently rejecting the notion of international law.
Everything you're linking to is being done through proxies and officially denied. A fishing vessel ramming another on alleged behalf of the Chinese government is materially quite different to openly sending drones to blow multiple ships up.
I do agree there is a stark difference between using missiles and bombs on ships versus ramming and water cannons.
However, you're incorrect about it just being fishing vessels and third parties. There are tons of examples of Chinese coast guard and navy ships doing this, its not unmarked fishing vessels or other third parties doing it on behalf of the Chinese state.
Whoever told you its just fishing vessels doing this are liars spreading misinformation. It has been official coast guard and naval vessels for years. This is very well documented.
The Chinese are being pretty open about it and there's abundant footage. I do agree it's qualitatively different. The Chinese ations are also different in that they're being used to assert a territorial claim: China has been building artificial islands (by dumpin large piles of dirt) so it extend its territorial waters. So they always claim the other vessels are violating their boundaries. I presume this is being undertaken with a view to keeping the US and its proxies as far away from their coastal areas as possible in the future.
PRC uses coast guard hulls, there's nothing being denied, these are generally framed as domestic maritime policing actions for PRC. Which is what makes the comparison generally stupid because PH / PCA ruling is not formal international law. UN/UNCLOS/ITLOS/ICJ has not recognized it, and PRC isn't party to optional arbituation clause, so ruling can't even apply to PRC. Ultimately PRC is simply doing domestic law enforcement in disputed maritime area with is not out of line with her UNCLOS obligations, i.e. until maritime delimitation formally settled at UNCLOS, there's nothing illegal about coastguard doing coastguard stuff in disputed area. This is not to mention up until a few years ago PRC ramming = while many other claimaints where flat out shooting. Like PRC coast guard ships were the last to get armed, some other claimaints already had heavy machine guns of lol missiles.
The flip side of this is US isn't signatory to UNCLOS so they can murder whoever they want on the highseas, and in the Hague I guess.
>The Philippine coastguard, in a statement, said a Chinese coastguard ship “fired its water cannon” at the BRP Datu Pagbuaya, a vessel belonging to Manila’s fisheries bureau, at 9:15am (01:15 GMT) on Sunday.
>Minutes later, the same vessel “deliberately rammed” the stern of the Philippine fisheries bureau vessel, causing “minor” damage to the boat.
Coastguard firing a water cannon and ramming a ship causing minor damage. This is the same as a military drone causing total destruction of multiple ships?
No merely addressing the "all done through proxies" claim. And to counter the argument you are making, is an official government owned vessel the same as small random fishing boat and/or smuggler? At least in terms of reaction? To GPs point, multiple large countries have been moving the overton window here for a long time.
Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them. The argument against the strikes is based on principle alone, and matters of principle count for nothing in geopolitics. Other countries aren't complaining too loudly because they are happy that the traffickers are getting killed, and even happier that someone else is doing it for them. China does worse things daily and nobody makes much of a fuss.
Historically we get the assurance at least from other branches of government and understand that various oversights are in place, not just whims of the executive.
This simply isn't true. Getting the populace on board is a standard and important part of democracies initiating military action. Bush and his team spent endless amounts of time briefing Congress and the public on their justifications for the Iraq war for example.
Ukraine has gone to extensive lengths to only target military and, more recently, energy infrastructure in Russia. They aren't blowing up random civilian vehicles or ships, and have a clear incentive to show that they aren't doing that.
Fighting drug smuggling is a flimsy pretext for why the US is blowing up random ships, although it's apparently one some people are willing to believe. Take the same actions but change up the countries and the reactions would be very different. This is about Trump doing yet another tough guy show of force against a much weaker country he feels safe enough bullying.
It's sad that the most popular military action is the least justified. Maybe they realised that attempts to justify these things only broaden the surface area for criticism.
Uh, Ukraine (GUR) deliberately blew up a random civilian who was unwittingly transporting explosives for them across the Kerch Bridge. As well as whoever happened to be nearby (fortunately it was early morning so traffic was light). They also randomly shell residential areas in the Belgorod region and Donetsk city using low-accuracy tube artillery and Grad rockets (including cluster munitions and butterfly mines). The fact that Russia is guilty of much worse does not mean these are not war crimes.
We shouldn't be in this situation asking these questions. Any questionable boats should be detained and boarded per the last several hundred years or so of maritime law.
Because they aren't flying a flag of the country in which their boat is registered. All boats do this. Not doing this is like flying a plane without filing a flight plan.
Technically when you don't fly a flag you are considered a pirate. Clearly they aren't pirates but they are smugglers. There is no other reason why you wouldn't fly a specific national flag. You can complain about the rules of engagement and that is fine. However, posts like yours aren't exactly rooted in honesty, competence or good faith.
Some rando on the internet isn't going to be able to prove or disprove this. You believe what you want based on what evidence is available to you.
Myself, the imagery I've seen of the multiple very expensive and very powerful outboard motors on these boats is enough for me to believe that these are not in fact honest fishermen. It's totally incongruous.
We don't have images / videos of all strikes. We don't have anything from the strike that the Colombian president claims was on a fishing boat, for one.
If you really want to go far enough with it, given the administration's general lack of trustworthiness, we don't even have confirmation that all the videos we've been given correspond to the strikes we've been told they correspond to.
> The argument against the strikes is based on principle alone
So you're alright with the sitting president in the US now being able to kill civil citizens in international waters without declaring a war? Without having to go through congress?
Just by saying: "Ah this is a terrorist organization. And these people must be part of that terrorist organization"
Since long before that. The US hasn't declared war in a long time, but they have spied on, tortured, killed, maimed etc foreign civilians all the time.
And their own. Remember as well as deliberately executing its own citizens abroad the US also still just tortures some of its own citizens to death for ordinary crimes which they may or may not have actually committed. Basically it's a third world country with more extremely wealthy people than you'd otherwise expect, it's eerily like several Arab countries, but with slightly more democracy, at least for now.
I was thinking of the extreme poverty and poor working conditions which are widespread in the US, but sure, the history of UK intervention in the Troubles isn't exactly a story of benevolence. No examples of torturing people to death came to mind though, are you thinking of some? The Five Techniques are torture, which is why they were banned before I was born, but the intent wasn't to torture people to death as I understand it - it's like "Enhanced Interrogation" in that you can tell idiots you're doing it to get information even though you're actually just a sadist. Even idiots understand that dead people can't tell you anything.
Is this more like the war on Terror, or the war on Christmas?
The US loves to announce that it is fighting in a "war" on some abstract concept, and subsequently that it has won the war for whichever side it decided it was fighting on - and meanwhile the abstract concept remains unchanged.
In practical terms, the US likes two measures, an international measure which doesn't adjust for local costs, so it can say hey, our people could buy enough food and so on in Cairo, so that's not poverty - ignoring the fact that they're not in Cairo and must pay US prices instead; and a US measure developed in the 20th century which assumes poor people don't need telephones, refrigerators, and such "luxuries" only available to the wealthy a hundred years ago.
Well, they won the war on terror, too. Or at least, terror gave up.
In any case, most of the time the people who claim that the war on poverty hasn't been won, like to look at the pre-tax, pre-redistribution income. Ignoring the great impact of the very programmes they are meaning to defend.
I think Trump is an idiot and almost everything he is doing is a disaster. And the fact that the country is still running in spite of this is thanks to a lot of effort by other people.
However, in this particular case, I do have doubt. Because drug cartels are a huge problem and local governments are often very bad at handling them. Now, I take into consideration that it might be poor Venezuelan fishermen that are being mistaken for drug dealers, but I very much doubt it. It wouldn't make sense for anyone: for Trump, once the truth comes out, for the military personnel doing the strikes, for the reconnaissance teams - it's just nonsensical. And I believe that Trump, even though I don't keep him in high regard, actually is not a fan of killing just for killing. Or, to put it more cynically, he won't win his dream Nobel prize for killing innocent people senselessly. So, maybe, in this one particular case, maybe it could be effective in scaring the cartels into finding other routes.
Venezuela more known for gold smuggling (and 'trafficking' people who want out) than drug smuggling.
I bet some environmentalist will argue that gold smuggling is worse than drug trafficking, but still, my bet is that most of the kills were trafficked people and gold smugglers.
>Because drug cartels are a huge problem and local governments are often very bad at handling them.
True, but the legal precedent this sets is very important. The requirement for sound legal justification is the only leverage the Judicial branch has. Today's Supreme Court may be too deferential to the President, but that's not to say they don't have a line (listen to yesterday's hearing on tariffs). Also, the Supreme Court a decade from now will rely on today's justifications.
I do not want to give any President the power to unilaterally conduct military killings of people he considers a terrorist. For this specific President, remember that he's declared Antifa a terrorist organization. And that he has very casually accused a lot of citizens as being in Antifa before.
> Or, to put it more cynically, he won't win his dream Nobel prize for killing innocent people senselessly
You say that, but the lady who just won it this year is practically cheering on the prospect of Trump taking military action _on her own country_ to overthrow their leader. So I don't think thirst for war or death precludes winning a peace prize, unfortunately
> It wouldn't make sense for anyone: for Trump, once the truth comes out, for the military personnel doing the strikes, for the reconnaissance teams - it's just nonsensical.
You don't need to think about military personnel or reconnaissance teams. They all report to the president, and as such don't have much choice in the matter. You already said that you think Trump is an idiot.
I maintain that he's doing this because he thinks it intimidates people and makes him look strong. When, in the past, has he ever worried about getting caught doing something wrong or stupid?
Yes. I said ‘did anyone ask’, aka did anyone doing them care.
And the answer is no. There was a bigger fuss in the power structure about the time he wore a tan suit, than about drone strikes.
That someone complains doesn’t mean if it matters. Plenty of people are complaining about what is going on now, also to zero effect.
And for those saying the AUMF justified Obama - it clearly didn’t justify it in Libya (not affiliated), and Congress expressly did not authorize it against ISIS - but drones were still widely used.
The biggest difference in these scenarios is if they were sold as ‘the right thing’, or as ragebait. There is plenty of precedent for presidents just droning/air striking countries with zero congressional approval - including Trump in his first term, Obama before that, etc.
Hell, Trump himself bombed Iran just a few months ago, and folks barely blinked an eye. Zero congressional involvement.
I'm not a fan of Obama's legacy of drone strikes. They hurt a lot of civilians and I think probably did more harm to US interests overseas than they helped.
However, most (if not all?) of the intended targets of Obama's drone strikes were targets with a pretty reasonable connection to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military force. So those drone strikes were likely "legal" and covered under what Congress enabled when it passed that law and has so far failed to repeal. Theoretically, these were all people Congress agreed we were essentially at war with. Congress can choose to repeal the AUMF at any time, and could have done so during Obama's term.
I don't think there's any reasonable interpretation that random boats of the coast of Venezuela have any connection to 9/11 though, and thus there's pretty much no way to contort an argument that these actions are then somehow allowable. If Trump wants to go to war against Venezuela, he needs to get Congress to approve.
Sitting US Presidents have been able to kill and massacre people (including US citizens) in international areas without declaring a congressionally approved War for a very long time now.
Just because Trump likes to heavily boviate while former Presidents generally kept this under the radar, doesn't change how the US operated.
I think you need to show evidence that this is a power U.S. Presidents have. As much as I dislike most of the drone strikes the U.S. has conducted in the "war on terror" in the Middle East (and think some of them are war crimes), that actually does have specific Congressional approval.
This military action in the Caribbean does not have that approval, and I don't think there is any way of categorizing the smuggling of drugs as a part of terrorism. Bad and illegal, and worthy of policing, yes. Terrorism, no.
And to be even more specific: I think that there is good evidence that in many countries the drug cartels are committing terroristic acts in many South American countries in order to force the populations there to accede to them. But those are in those countries, and are not directed at the United States. And blowing up boats that the U.S. suspects are carrying narcotics (sometimes not even on their way to the U.S.), is not fighting that terrorism.
If you are referring specifically to AUMF-2001 under which both President Bush and then President Obama used as justification to bomb anything they disliked in the middle-east - including drug crop fields of the Taliban, I would point out that is an extremely flimsy supporting argument. The authorization was stretched until it was less than paper-thin. Many of the folks that the US bombed also became funded by the US just a few years later.
Head-chopping terrorists magically became "moderate rebels" - famous term by President Obama.
(I don't support these strikes - my only point was that former US Presidents unfortunately setup this tradition and culture of military strikes that has now been normalized. Congress needs to firmly reclaim the use of lethal international force under their authority.)
The point is that there isn't anything like the AUMF that authorizes these recent strikes in the Caribbean/pacific. The administration reported them to Congress at the outset, but now that the 60 day limit (on continuing something without Congressional authorization) they've switched to claiming they don't need Congressional authority.
Overbroad application of the AUMF in no way authorizes these actions. The administration claims it has a legal memo articulating why they're OK, but refuses to disclose it, citing security concerns. That's applicable to the specific intelligence they use, but not to legal arguments that supposedly justify their use of force.
I'm opposed to the drone strikes, but there is a clear difference here. In the case of these fishy vessels, they could be detained and boarded. It's not really a high risk situation, and it's something the Navy and Coast Guard are trained to do.
In the case of alleged terrorists being targeted by drone strikes, it would be risky in many cases to try to apprehend those individuals. They are in foreign countries or parts thereof which are not under U.S. control or control of an ally.
It's only not a high risk situation if they are in fact honest fishermen. If they were drug smugglers, I would expect them to also carry weapons. Boarding seems risky to me.
It's something routinely done, with ample ability to defend themselves against a single speedboat. They can always shoot a missile at the boat after it starts shooting at the coast guard; the outrage is that that was the first thing.
I didn't ask about China doing "worse things daily," I asked about China blowing up vessels in international waters and amassing a naval fleet off the coast of another country. If I understand correctly you are saying the world would be fine with that as long as they claimed the vessels belonged to a drugs cartel?
There's a distinction that you either didn't recognize or willfully excluded.
It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that they were drug vessels. Not even Venezuela [1]. Maduro has denied that he is involved with the drug cartels, and Venezuela has claimed that the one or more of the strikes occurred within Venezuela's territorial waters, but they haven't made the argument that those boats were actually innocent non-criminal vessels.
And once you make that distinction, then yes. The world is fine with blowing up vessels that belong to drug cartels, even if China did it. They probably wouldn't be fine if it was actually refugees, but this does not appear to be the case.
> It's not that the US is simply "claiming" the vessels belong to a drug cartel, it's that nobody is denying that they were drug vessels.
What? The king of England hasn't denied that they're drug smuggling vessels either, it doesn't mean he's admitting they are. I don't understand this logic at all.
Dude, are you even trying to argue in good faith? Nobody cares what the King of England would say about this, he's not involved in any way. But the fact that not even the country of Venezuela is denying that they are drug boats is quite informative. Don't you think that if these boats were even remotely innocent that Venezuela would be showing the international community all the proof of the atrocities that the USA was committing?
Just because the USA has committed atrocities in the past doesn't mean that everything the government says is a lie. It's okay to be skeptical but if you haven't found any evidence to the contrary you should start to accept that maybe the US government actually hit real drug boats.
I don't support these strikes since I personally believe the US would be far better served in the long run by arrest and interrogation - and not just a matter of ethical principle.
Having said that, all legal vessels have an ID and someone would have complained already about their property and crew being blown up. Its pretty clear they belong to hardcore criminal elements.
Random poor farmers manage to drive cars, trucks, planes, boats, drones, etc. What is so special about a DIY submarine with a max depth of like 15 feet that they couldn't be taught in about 15 minutes? These aren't WWII U-boats, they are small personal craft. There is even an entire community of DIY Caribbean submarines for exploring coral reefs and shit and they aren't all build and drove by engineering PHDs.
They are more complicated than you state. Crew need to navigate long distances in open ocean, handle rough weather, and perform docking/unloading. These subs have control systems, ballast tanks and pumps. You need both training and experience.
Mismanagement can cause swamping or sinking. The management loses their vessel and their cargo.
Basically, "just random poor farmers that took a pay day from a cartel" is simply not possible.
"perform docking/unloading" LOL. Pull up on a beach in the middle of the night and grab the bricks out of the sub for the guys waiting for you there. This isn't a commercial port with cargo cranes, industrial equipment, and all that. As for handling rough weather, it's a sub. What's going to happen? It's going to sink?
Yes, it will sink. These are semi-submersible "narco-subs". They have weak hulls and little reserve buoyancy. They have very little margin for error in heavy seas.
> Pull up on a beach in the middle of the night and grab the bricks out of the sub for the guys waiting for you there.
Beaching (and getting off a beach) is a bit tricky for semi-submersible narco-subs. You need the right water depth for approach and departure - otherwise you can get grounded or stranded. Waves can swamp you. These subs are cheap - they have simple propulsion and little reserve power and have difficulty making tight corrections.
I am not sure why people are thinking it is as simple as driving your bike. It needs both training and experience.
> Crew need to navigate long distances in open ocean
Not incredibly difficult these days with GPS. Especially if they're doing an Atlantic crossing, its not like there's a lot of things to hit. They're all diesel-electrics, they spend a lot of their time practically at the surface. When they need to dive, its usually only for a few hours at a time, a compass heading is good enough for those times especially in the open ocean. Its not like they're trying to read complicated sonar outputs or anything like that. They're not busting out a sextant to figure out their latitude. They also aren't explorers trying to chart out a new path, they're pretty much going to follow the known good routes other boats have gone before.
> perform docking/unloading
I imagine there are more than just the people operating the boats at the docks. I also don't think it takes a lot of training and skill to pick things up and set things down. And its not like they're having to be some certified harbor pilot bringing in the boat into the shipping lanes, its going to be some little dock off in the middle of nowhere far away from other traffic.
They could learn the ropes of how to operate this thing in a few days along with some good basic documentation, assuming the farmers are literate. Its not like its that hard figuring out "this handle makes us dive, this handle makes us go up, don't go deeper than this, make sure batteries stay within this range, follow the GPS route".
I'm not saying these couldn't possibly be well-trained people operating these vessels, but it doesn't take too much training to figure out how to operate one of these things.
So would you say it's fine if China claims that some boats in the South China Sea are drug traffickers and blows them up without any evidence?
Shouldn't there be some evidence at least that this is the case? Maybe capture the boat and show the drugs, instead of just blowing up any chance of evidence?
> So would you say it's fine if China claims that some boats in the South China Sea are drug traffickers and blows them up without any evidence?
People making those arguments probably would say it is fine, in the abstract, then when it actually happened they would loudly complain that it was a violation of some treaty or another nation’s sovereignty.
Cartels are not some unique exception to the rule of law any more than human traffickers, terrorists, or other bad guys. But the rule of law doesn’t really matter anymore.
The legalism of the 20th century is stone dead. In time we will have to relearn the lessons that first brought us there, hopefully without too many needless deaths along the way.
Divulging your means and methods is a surefire way of getting the cartels to adjust their operating procedure to avoid detection. If they're being watched via satellites, they'll move their ports. If their cell phones have been hacked and are leaking info, they'll start using different devices. If there's a human source giving the info, he'll be hunted down.
It's not like this is the first time when the US has withheld evidence for certain actions it took. That doesn't mean the evidence isn't there. This is generally a problem with judging government behavior due to the information asymmetry
Would I say it's "fine?" No. I also wouldn't say it's just fine that Trump is blowing up cartel boats. But would I be outraged, or even feel sorry for them? Also no.
This isn't really a direct answer, it's just hand waving. I'm not sure how you're qualifying "ten times worse" and without pointing to specific scenarios it's impossible to verify the responses or non-responses to them.
The real answer is that these boats are not flying national flags. That makes it legal under maritime laws that have been in place for hundreds of years. If you are watching a news source that doesn't mention this, you are consuming propaganda. BTW, this line of propaganda about lack of rule of law is dangerous. Seriously, you should stop it.
Show the law where not flying a flag means you can blow up a ship. I see plenty of boats every day not flying flags. They could be smuggling drugs. Why not explode them too?
You keep arguing that not displaying a falg is justification for killing people. This is bullshit. It's justification for interdicting a vessel but not for simply blowing it up.
Explain to me in what scenario it would make sense to put 7 people on a small speed boat and fill up the rest with drugs to transport them from one Caribbean location to another.
Explain to me in what scenario innocent people loaded the boats up like the ones shown in the video below just to do what? Dodge tarriffs? A boat like that full of cocaine is worth enough money to be worth the trip. A boat like that full of coffee beans is not worth enough. And that isn't a fishing boat, a tour boat, or any recreational yacht.
But there it makes sense. It is a short distance and there is lots of police which puts time pressure on the transport and offloading. If you are near Venezuela why wouldnt you just put your tons of drugs in fishing boats or transport ships. What do you need the additional half a ton of human weight in those small boats for?
Trump pardoned the operator of the largest opiates by mail operator in world history on his first or second day in office (Ross Ulbricht). I'm pretty sure they're doing this just to start war with Venezuela from some mix of Venezuela nationalizing their oil in the past and wanting to undo that, Venezuela lobby and intersection of with the rightwing Cuban lobby/Rubio's ties to that. Democracy probably as low concern, given our relation with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
The history of Rubio introducing the Venezuela Temporary Protected Status and Asylum Assistance Act of 2018 in Trump's first term, leading to large parts of the "immigration crisis" under Biden, and then Rubio going along with rescinding the status is pretty crazy. We played a big part in their economic crisis, offered asylum to many people driven to flee not just politically but largely from that crisis, then rescinded status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and began deporting to concentration camps based in some cases on tattoos, now the extrajudicial killings, and it's looking like big potential for a war of aggression.
You aren't getting it. Basically every country on earth hates the cartels and wants them dead. They aren't going to complain when somebody is making that happen, and they don't much care how it's done as long as it isn't happening on their soil. And they care even less that the people doing it aren't saints themselves because nobody is. Nobody is going to stick their neck out for a cartel.
When there are survivors we've just been sending them back. Likely some haven't been smuggling drugs at all, and even less to the US given the distance and the range of the boats. In 25% of coast guard drug suspicion induced stops near the US, the coast guard fails to find any drugs. Would you be ok with the US national guard going into Appalachian cities and killing doctors suspected of running pill mills without trial, by aerial bombardment, and with high rate of mistakes?
I realise my comment is not super clear. I meant that the world seems to stand by because nobody is in position of escalating against the US.
Those operations have nothing to do with cartels and everybody knows that. Nobody knows if those boats are remotely linked to cartels, there's reason to doubt that the US army even does.
Cartels are irrelevant here and the murder of random people is not why the world stands by and let this happen.
Because surely the people running drugs across international water in boats are certainly hardened cartel members that make decisions and not just whatever poor saps they can find that are desperate for money?
We're powerwalking towards regime change wars over cocaine. It strikes me as completely absurd to employ our significant military power to destroy tiny vessels at sea instead of targeting operations and finances. It seems just as amoral and egregious to make a show of such wanton and asymmetric destruction.
I have a number of questions about this like:
- Is our military intelligence now being used to conduct international police work and enforce international or domestic law?
- Should we expect our police mandate to extend to foreign countries?
- Are these military operations undermining existing narcotics operations and international cooperation with DEA?
- When these civilians dissolve back into the population, will we chase them there with cruise missiles and drone strikes?
- If the cartels load a brick onto FedEx freight, will we destroy the aircraft? Why not just blow it up?
- Does it matter who is captaining the vessels, if the cartels (as ruthless as they are, and I am on board with this sentiment 100%) force/threaten/coerce a person to mule for them, how would this victim convert to a valid military target?
- This is whataboutism or close enough, but it is more than reasonable: Didn't our previous interventions in these exact regions train thousands of elite paramilitary operators who would later become the very mercenaries and thugs running the show today? (School of the Americas, Los Zetas)
- Why does it feel like we are replaying 2 or 3 of our worst policy blunders since the 1980's and/or are we actually just cleaning up the blowback?
> Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them.
So far zero proof of that, but plenty of proof that this administration lies about everything. So, the probabilities suggest these are lies too and they're just murdering random fishermen.
> So you really believe they are just murdering random fisherman for fun?
I believe they are murdering geographically-selected fisherman and painting them as traffickers targeting the US (even though this is implausible for multiple reasons) as propaganda to manifest justifying “escalation” in a war they have been claiming even before they started those publicized murders was being actively fought between Venezuela in the US as a pretext for bypassing due process and moving toward direct executive fiat and militarization of civilian life within the US, starting with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15.
Fisherman? No. But you could go to any marina on a US coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on them. You are an idiot if you go out on the open sea with some little boat with just 1 motor, having extra engine power is the only thing keeping you alive out on the open ocean.
> But you could go to any marina on a US coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on them.
I live on the coast, in an area of the country where the local culture is, shall we say, fond of excess horsepower in all areas of life, including on boats. My next-door neighbor is a member at the local yacht club. I spend a lot of time walking by boats of many shapes and sizes. I don't recall the last time I saw one with four outboard motors.
Guess these are all purpose built drug smuggling boats. Shit, some have 5 engines.
Shit, I live near some crappy lakes in Texas and I still see a few four-engine boats by people with more money than sense. Guess they're trafficking that fentanyl from Lewisville to Little Elm.
Are these $500K boats in a country with a GDP per capita of $5000? Are these boats taking off from areas that are known origin points for drug trafficking? Are these boats making sketchy long distance one way trips or just cruising around for the day and returning to the same marina? Have you surveilled these boats with insane OP state of the art military surveillance tech and concluded that they are running drugs?
I haven't been to Venezuela, so I couldn't tell you specifically about Venezuela. While there has been a lot of poverty the last couple of decades in Venezuela, there used to be a ton of prosperity. It wouldn't surprise me if there were still a good number of wealthy people with fancy fishing boats in Venezuela despite there being so much poverty.
And while I haven't been to Venezuela, I have been to a number of pretty poor Caribbean countries. I still find some pretty decked out fishing boats, often for hire/rent to international tourists. Or they just are owned by foreigners/tourists. Or as mentioned, they're some of the wealthy people in the otherwise poor country. Rich people are pretty much all over the place, especially in otherwise desirable places to live (some extremely beautiful beaches and coastlines).
Please share the evidence that the boats being targeted cost $500K, that they took off from an origin point of known drug trafficking, that they were on a one way trip, or that they were surveilled with advanced military tech.
Why don't they argue boats loaded with strange cargo hauling ass in the middle of the ocean is probably a drug boat instead of suggesting all boats with four outboard engines can't possibly be a fishing boat? Go to any docks on the Gulf Coast, you'll find tons of four-engine fishing boats. Or are those all used for narcotics smuggling?
I'm not arguing they're definitely not drug boats. They likely are! But the person I replied to suggested all boats with four outboard engines are likely drug boats, which is absurd.
> Tell me about the 100k fentanyl deaths each year. How does this volume of drugs reach the US?
Illicitly manufactured fentanyl used in the US is predominantly produced in Mexico and smuggled across the very large land border between the US and Mexico.
Probably the next most common source is domestic illicit production.
Your rhetorical question suggests you thought lots of fentanyl is coming on boats on the ocean. This might be a good moment to pause and reflect on where you get your information and how you reach your conclusions.
I understand that fentanyl is not coming Venezuala but I dont think what you've stated is the devastating point you think it is.
The US is also awash with cocaine (20k overdoses a year is the tip of the iceberg).
I note that none of the replies to my parent comment had anything to say about the scourge of drugs across America.
I guess 120k deaths a year is a small price to pay if it makes Trump look bad, right?
Then why didn’t you say cocaine? The connection of these boats to any drugs is dubious, but you picked a drug that they’re definitely not involved in even if you 100% believe the administration.
"The connection of these boats to any drugs is dubious..." this is simply ridiculous.
Boats with 3-4 outboards on the back carrying large bails of some unknown "cargo" transiting well-established drug routes is obviously not a "dubious" connection. We also don't know what the intelligence was on the ground which I'm also guessing was quite substantial.
Neither you or I have the faintest clue what information was available behind the targeting decisions. Reality and your desire to frame things to justify your hatred of Trump are two completely different things.
People cooking it up domestically? Its not hard to make (if you don't mind killing some people) and its ingredients can be commonly found in the US.
Through small parcels from China mixed in with regular mail? People mail weed all the time and that's also illegal to go through the mail. A small parcel can carry many thousands of doses with high enough purity.
Most fentanyl in the US probably has little to no connection to Venezuela. Probably lots of other drugs, sure, but not fentanyl.
A lethal amount of fentanyl can be as small as 1-2mg. So enough fentanyl to kill 100k people would be like 50ish grams. Its not nearly some massive amount of material like you seem to think it is.
I believe they are murdering people they have convinced themselves are probably drug traffickers, for fun and geopolitical tensions.
For instance, the CIA was following the preacher Roni Bowers cessna plane as suspicious for drug trafficking. And then she was shot down, and her family killed. Because intelligence is often wrong.
Now you'll point out, after they were shot down, magically it was uncovered the CIA actually suggested the people that shot them down not do it. Even though the CIA was the one sticking them on them in the first place.[] If they had actually been drug traffickers, or just nobodies, of course, we'd hear precisely what we've been hearing about these vessels, which is jack squat from the government other than they killed the "drug traffickers" and we'd never hear about the voices that recommend they not.
If they end up killing a preacher or a scientist in the future, you can be sure they'll magically find the same evidence. "We warned them not to this time, but they did it anyway."
Reasonable take. I think they at least believe they are doing something good for the country.
The El Salvador approach to extreme aggression against cartels has changed the calculus for many leaders in the Americas. See Rio De Janeiro last week.
Can you elaborate? El Salvador's approach seems to me to be "let Trump use our prisons, he lets go of our drug dealers". Bukele's closeness to MS13 of course biases him against their rivals, but that doesn't stop drugs from coming to the US, just who gets the money.
I'm talking about how Bukele went slash and burn against the gangs, arresting anyone loosely associated with them. Yes, plenty of innocent or less-guilty people got swept up in this dragnet, but it totally changed the society there. People can go outside and feel safe now.
Yep, this is clearly what is stupid about the situation. They want to blow the boats up. Now, if I wanted to do it, I'd blow some up, then disable some and show how they were loaded with drugs and we never got the boats wrong.
In this case, I don't think they care what's on the boats.
Yeah, turns out that only a very small fraction of drugs entering the US transit the Caribbean, so no amount of effort interdicting drug boats there is going to lead to meaningful improvement over the previous status quo.
For fun? Not entirely. But these killings make great propaganda pieces about stopping foreigners and drugs despite not making even a dent or scratch against illegal drug importation.
Of course not. They're murdering random fishermen for political gain.
The US has gone to war with entire countries over complete bullshit. Remember WMDs? Gulf of Tonkin? Do you really think the current government is above killing a few randos to make themselves look good?
Yes, that's what the US has been doing for decades after all.. After all, they could easily (attempt to) arrest them without killing them.
Fortunately, it's becoming more of a multipolar world. The neocons (just like yourself) have no morals.
> Because they are drug traffickers and nobody likes them.
I mean thats what the US is saying, but proof is elusive.
> The argument against the strikes is based on principle alone,
No, law, and the US's own rules of engaguement. Fucking about in international waters, and sinking civilian boats with no warning, proof or attempt to detain is going to cause issues when it happens to the USA.
> Other countries aren't complaining too loudly because they are happy that the traffickers are getting killed
They are not complaining because the USA is run by a capricious child who will cause economic harm if his ego is attacked.
> China does worse things daily and nobody makes much of a fuss.
You might not be looking at it, but those who live near are making a huge fucking fuss.
Just curious, why should I believe this is merely neocon propaganda? I've read tidbits about this off & on over the years and it doesn't seem that straight forward, even if calling it genocide is on the hyperbolic side.
Technically its just ethnic cleaning because its trying to destroy their local culture. But somehow I bet you don't want to base your argument on this technicality.
And yet, the arguments against the narrative of Uighur genocide seem to exclusively be childish insults. Seriously, I see comments just like this all the time when someone mentions Uighur genocide, of which there is some evidence, and never an actual refutation. Are simpletons those who believe evidence might indicate truth, or those who let themselves be browbeaten by tribalism into believing otherwise? I wouldn't even ask if I thought you were just a CCP bot but your post history suggests you're not.
That's a lazy and irrelevant response because, as I actually said, evidence has been provided. If it's bad evidence, say that, instead of making a new claim that someone else is an idiot, for which the burden of proof is on you.
Further, these comments tend to come with the claim that the whole thing is a CIA/FBI hoax. Guess who bears the burden of proof for that? (Don't bother guessing. It's the person making the claim.)
If the Chinese are committing genocide against the Uighurs, the US is also committing genocide against its black population, which it imprisons and kills at much higher rates. I'm willing to accept that both are committing active genocide but few China-haters seem to be.
Well man. We know the general size of the area, we know for a fact, that Israel has dropped explosive ordinance on this area that is a multiple of the explosive power of the atomic detonations in hiroshima. We've all seen the videos of endless blocks reduced to rubble.
You may not want to call it genocide, but a whole fucking truckload of people has been obliterated by explosive power, are you telling me that Hamas was that big? I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that Israel killed more people in Gaza in two years than the US killed in Afghanistan over two decades.
And even if they are, where does it say that drug traffickers should be executed on the spot? Furthermore, where is the law that punishes drug trafficking with death?
It's always the same "but uhhh China is even worse" argument but no proof to back it up. It's also completely invalid to justify an immoral action by comparing it to something even worse: "Yeah we genocided some palestinians but hitler was even worse so it's ok".
Surely all the Venezuelan cops who are getting paid to turn a blind eye like them. IDK how many of those guys there are and how much pull they have with the government....
They don't. The people paying them and the schleps on the drug boats are two different people. They're putting their worthless peasants on the boats; Venezuela is chalk full of them so blowing up a few here and there makes no difference in the incoming bribe money nor to the drug trafficking organizations.
No one cares that they are dead. Not their employers, not the Venezuelan government, not the police who can now exploit the families of the dead even more, nor the Americans bombing them. They are mere expendable flesh in a game of politics, a token blood offering to the kings and princes of prohibition.
My point is that even if the government would rather not have a drug trade fueled competing government within it's borders (which is what the cartels basically are) there's a whole bunch of people in the pickaxe business that would rather the gold rush remain profitable which potentially constrains the government's ability to solve the problem itself.
If I were the police looking to sell the most "pickaxes" I'd be thinking more about how I could take bribes from traffickers and also sell out the traffickers (or just selected patsies with the blessing of the cartels) to the US authorities at the same time.
They may be able to sell even more pickaxes than before.
Not just the police. They're just providing "pay me to F-off". There's guys building boats, guys driving trucks, etc, etc. It's a part of the overall economy and everyone who gets a cut, and every local government who themselves get a cut has a huge incentive to not kick that industry out.
Yes, that makes total sense, that a narcoterror regime would entrust the security of their extremely valuable drug shipments to "worthless peasants" instead of professional gunmen from Tren de AGUA.
They don't put pros on the boats because there is no reason to. Their gunmen won't do a damn thing against the coat guard, and nobody private is dumb enough to hijack a cartel boat, and the peasants on that boat know exactly what happens if they don't deliver the cargo.
Professional gunmen doing what exactly, while they are on a go-fast boat or narco-submarine with actual professional gunman on the docks on either end? The only people capable and willing to board such boats are the coast guard. Sending higher up professional gunmen to risk the open seas would be virtually pointless. Even if a private individual/group tried it, the cartel would 'deal' with them as soon as they got it back on land, no need to risk their enforcers on the high seas for such an improbable event.
You can see the same thing watching drug trafficking police videos. Most the time the drugs are in transit it is some random poor person with not much else going on in their lives. As soon as they are confronted by armed men they play dumb until the ruse is up.
It's tolerated because the US is the most powerful country in the world. Lots of things we do wouldn't be accepted from any other country (invading countries unprovoked, funding and arming genocides, staging coups and rigging elections, assassinating foreign leaders, the list goes on and on)
What is the evidence that these are drug traffickers? Are they convicted anywhere? Should the police in the US be able to execute anyone they claim are trafficking drugs or committing other crimes?
..."alleged" drug traffickers. These are summary executions. The US shouldn't be committing summary executions in international waters anymore than they should be doing so on US soil.
The reason no other country is doing anything about it is because, well, what would they do? Submit a complaint to the ICC? And for what benefit to themselves?
