How do you know they are drug traffickers? This administration doesn't exactly have a track record of honesty, competence, and acting in good faith.
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.
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.
The populace is very much already on board.
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...]