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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.’”).

The legal ground can debate itself however it wants by ignoring the obvious & massive moral standing it seeks to embrace or shirk.

I for one think this is an insult to life itself, to summarily execute whomever you vaguely suspect, while they are out in international waters.

Calling these people non-state combatants maybe legally entitles you to just fucking blowing them away with incredibly super fantastically expensive military equipment & ammunition. But you're already accepting hook line & sinker every bit of the administration's long chain of self-granted rights: that Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists is a legit emergency tantamount to war, the classification of folks as combatants, and the verdict that these particular people are all indeed in this clasificstion & deserving of death, for the base essential security of this nation. Not a single one of those steps in any way seems essential and every link there deeply denigrates in my view the law & majesty of the US, seems a preposterous assertion beyond the pale & massive weak baby no-backbone loser move, showing all the bravery of people afraid to ride the NYC metro, and insulting to the essence of law.

Maybe the law allows this, maybe the executive grants it. But the disproportionality is insane and insulting. These acts lower this nation, and it feels like there are so many more direct ways to take on global terrorism and cartels, that don't resort to morally if not legally lawless murder in international waters.

>to summarily execute whomever you vaguely suspect,

If the US had only a vague suspicion about the boat, I would be very critical of this strike, but the Secretary of Defense said that "We knew exactly who was in that boat. We know exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented," and none of the half dozen articles critical of the strike I skimmed tried to suggest that that assertion is wrong or exaggerated or that the US didn't have reliable information about who was on the boat or what they were doing.

The administration seems abundant happy to throw around insane accusations about gangs and cartels with basically zero back up or evidence.

Right out of the gate, it's been a petty attempt to puff up and enemy. Claiming Aurora Colorado was taken over by Tren de Aragua started basically a year ago, and was absurd nonsense, edging closely on pure fiction. https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/10/11/false-claims-gang-ta...

What's happened with Kilmar Armando Ábrego García shows the commitment and dedication to gross injustice at all costs, purely to press a point, no matter how fabricated. This random father & sheet metal union apprentice is some big time crime dude, because you said so? Get real.

This administration enjoys lying, enjoys making big bold grandiose claims that it seemingly has not a lick of evidence to support. The whole claim about Tren de Aragua being some awful terrible threat seem fantastical & absurd. Maybe there are a couple small problems here in the homeland that they cause, but the administration has invented a Boogeyman, has created as much Fear Uncertainty and Doubt as it can, over the most marginal tiniest problem of the most marginal significance, with which this giant justifies throwing its weight around against the fly. It's pathetic, akin to being afraid of the subway or a city. They breed cowardice & terror for their sick political ability to string up their base in suspense & terror mongering & so it seems here. Pathetic pathetic pathetic losers of no caliber not just disproportionally responding in extremely wasteful ways, but doing so in direct insult to the American citizenry with its falsified fake terror-mongering. Absolutely infernal & dementedly sick lowness.

Zero respect for anything the admin says right now about this whole made up fake news fake war. Vance saying that this ignormaneous bullshit of no consequence is the highest purpose of the US military shows how incredibly zero standards they set, to denigrate the troops with this pointless small irrelevant police action as opposed to doing real things in the world. The admin also hasn't told Congress anything, cancelling the meeting over it. It's all made up phantasms. https://www.axios.com/2025/09/05/trump-drug-boat-strike-vene...

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...

We asked you not long ago to stop using HN primarily for political battle (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44448917), and we've asked you countless times before.

If you keep doing it, we are going to end up banning you. Please fix this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If they were trying to bomb your country I might agree, but they're merely selling goods you don't like, that alter people's feelings for a bit. Should we also drone strike producers of tobacco and beer?

They also don't drone strike illegal border crossers (yet).

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?

Not acting like ISIS or the Taliban is something I wish I saw more of from the US government. The way we portray and carry ourselves, how we treat others should reflect a higher standard. But antagonism, griefing, and courseness, the infinite low grievance machine, all while increasingly repressing our own people, invading our own lands, forcing our moral doctrine atop th natural liberty of our citizens all seem to be the sad low age we are in.

I would probably agree and I don't even know what our moral doctrine is anymore. Not only is it unclear during some presidency, but it changes dramatically between presidencies. However right or wrong, my two points are slightly orthogonal.

1) That Venezuela looks like it's just about an active enemy at this point and Maduro and his admin are closely tied to a couple cartels. (Also side note, Venezuela still has not claimed those 11 were innocents but denied anything happened and said the video was AI generated which kind of confirms to me those were cartels). So now the war on terror has expanded once more to the drug industry. Shucks, looks like another never ending war this guy promised to end.

2) That in the modern video sharing era, propaganda is key and if they use videos to recruit I guess we use videos to dissuade now. I guess that means snuff vids made by the USA are probably going to be a thing now. Sure, we lose decorum but I guess it has a logic to it although I would not want to be the person responsible for our propaganda PR campaigns.

Nah, Trump is literally doing god's work here. In fact I'm cheering for him.

Latin America is almost completely dominated by violent drug trafficking borderline terrorist organized crime gangs.

Over 26% of my country's territory is directly ruled by these gangs. They have infiltrated and corrupted every part of society. It's become impossible to so much as pump gas into our cars without contributing to their finances and continued success.

My country is a narcostate pretending to be a democracy and I have no doubt many if not all of my neighbours are just as bad if not worse. Trump should refuse to even recognize the legitimacy of these nations. Especially that of "democracies" ruled by drug cartel-backed communist dictators such as Venezuela.

Blow up a fucking boat? You really should see what these people do to each other and to the people subjected to their rule on a daily basis. Trump was actually quite humane.