The military has never had to share its intelligence with civilians and it's not going to start now just to ease your mind.
Literally nobody is demanding Ukraine prove its targets are actually part of the Russian military before striking them.
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.
The populace is very much already on board.
Correction: they spent endless amounts of time lying to congress and the UN about their concocted, pretextual justification for the Iraq war.
One, legitimately unclear to what degree Bush et al believed the nonsense.
Two, they bothered to engage. That's OP's point.
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.
Source? Piracy's definition under UNCLOS seems pretty tight [1].
[1] https://www.un.org/depts/los/piracy/piracy_legal_framework.h...
https://www.marinepublic.com/blogs/marine-law/294870-unclos-...
So far, no one with a government who is both willing and able to make a fuss about it has been involved.
This is what realpolitik is.
Yes. The precedent being established would let e.g. China or Russia pot a yacht on the high seas for reasons which only work under their own laws.
[https://cepa.org/article/bombs-on-board-the-strange-streak-o...]
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"
> basically it's a third world country
is imprecise and misleading. torturing your own citizens to death is a first world specialty, see for example the troubles in northern Ireland
Working conditions are by and large also pretty good. Americans love going to work much more than most Europeans.
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.
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.
See https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61157 for more than you'd ever wanted to know.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Venezuel...
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.
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
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/05/machado-praises-tru...
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?
No one really asked if anyone was okay with Obama ‘droning’ random folks while calling them terrorists either.
Notably, using the same tools (social network analysis, etc) that are now apparently being aimed at domestic ‘terrorists’.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/us-military-dr...
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
Just because Trump likes to heavily boviate while former Presidents generally kept this under the radar, doesn't change how the US operated.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_Interdiction_Tactic...
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.
Maybe this hasn't been aired on Fox News, but people are:
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/colombian-killed-us-strike-...
See also Cuba emptying its jails and sending the prisoners to Florida: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/criminals-in-exodus-from-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> amassing a naval fleet off the coast of another country
Surely you are joking about this part, right?
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?
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.
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 you be okay with bombing some guys house that was growing marijuana? Or gunning down people in fancy cars that are suspected to contain drugs?
2. You like to make money
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.
Cartels will be fine though, do not worry. USA credibility, less and less.
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.
Why resort to madness and slaughter?
- 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?
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.
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.
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.
Boats with four outboard engines? Sure, lots of them, I see those all the time when I'm at the coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dpvFzlmW0Y
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
It used to come primarily from Indian and China way back in 2023... https://insightcrime.org/investigations/how-fentanyl-synthes...
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."
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Peru_Cessna_185_shootdown
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.
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.
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?
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.
TLDR:
just wait till someone does it to the USA.
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.)
Are they? How do you know?
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.
They may be able to sell even more pickaxes than before.
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.