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...
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.’”).
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...
If you keep doing it, we are going to end up banning you. Please fix this.
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.
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.
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...
They also don't drone strike illegal border crossers (yet).