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Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

If you traffic drugs to China the CCP will do things to you that are very much worse than the comparatively humane quick death in an airstrike.

> amassing a naval fleet off the coast of another country

Surely you are joking about this part, right?

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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.

Again, I'm not asking about other unnamed things China may or may not do. I'm asking about blowing up ships in international waters.

Then I will answer you perfectly directly. Nobody would give the slightest shit because China already does things 10x worse and nobody gives a shit.

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.

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.

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?

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