> Over the last month the U.S. has carried out several interdiction strikes on narco-trafficking boats in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean
There’s no proof that that’s actually what they’re doing. They should present some.
There’s no proof that that’s actually what they’re doing. They should present some.
/s
What do you think they're doing? And what kind of proof would you expect?
Proof would be if rather than blowing up the boats, they, say, intercepted them, searched them, and actually found drugs.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/18/politics/caribbean-boat-strik...
What? The whole point of the "enemy combatant" designation is to say that they're not criminals and not PoWs either. I don't like it but it was the standard position under Bush, Obama, and Biden, there's nothing new here.
“No US troops directly in danger means anything goes” is really the most cynical way to do FP, and all this tech has enabled it
There is a very long tradition of treating pirates as outside of all laws because pirates would murder and pillage in one jurisdiction or on the high seas and then sail away to another jurisdiction. So all nations had a duty to confront pirates. That is not to say that summary execution was considered normal - it happened, but typically pirates were captured and afforded some due process.
In the modern era this logic has been extended to terrorism and certain crimes against humanity like torture.
It has NOT been extended to encompass drug trafficking. If you're smuggling drugs from Venezuela to Trinidad, you really don't want to be detected, so you're not going to stop any random ship that you see and murder the crew and steal the cargo. The whole concept of the pirate as someone who is waging war on humanity with extreme violence and can't be effectively dealt with by the nation that is effected doesn't really apply neatly to this situation.
You could make the argument that because drugs are dangerous, and drugs can be transported anywhere, that drug traffickers are effectively enemies of humanity who are doing extreme violence in the same vein as terrorists and pirates. But that would be a novel argument, not, in any way, "normal".
The same military used a 6 figure missile to shoot down a children's balloon https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo
Know what Venezuela has a shit-ton of though? Oil. Guess who loves the oil, gas, and coal industries? If your answer involves someone orange you'd be right. Guess who got kicked out of Venezuela when Chavaz took over? If you said large multinational oil corporations you'd be correct.
On top of that donnie gets to look tough against a country that largely has no serious regional allies in fact I believe a lot of them are pissed, China has ties but they aren't going to ratchet up the trade fiasco over Maduro, russia is a bit busy punching itself in the balls and last I check Venezuelans aren't big fans of Maduro so donnie is basically riskless save domestically.
Also given the size of those boats I'd wager a solid amount on the total lost amount would be equivalent to taking out 8 McDonald's store shipments and claiming you've dealt a serious blow to McDonald's bottom line.
Venezuela’s oil production is a single digit percentage of US oil production and the quality of their crude is famously poor. The US neither needs it nor wants it except to the extent they pay the US to refine it for them because they don’t have that ability.
Pinning this action on a desire for oil is a lazy argument far past its expiration date.
Also did you think I was suggesting the U.S. govt wants it? Donnie's friends in the oil industry want it, single digit, double digit, doesn't matter to them greed knows no bounds with that crowd and this isn't Iraq in 2004 under Bush which I never believed had anything to do with oil.
The US has always had significant control over Venezuelan oil production because the US runs some of the only refineries that can process that type of low-quality crude. If the US banned Chevron from refining Venezuelan oil in the US, Venezuela has few other options. The US already captures much of the value of Venezuelan oil production because of the refinery monopsony. There is little margin in the rest of it. They’ve been profit-maxxing Venezuelan crude for decades.
Your argument could have been reasonable a few decades ago in a “big picture” geopolitical sense but we don’t live a few decades ago. OPEC no longer controls oil prices and the US is the uncontested oil producing superpower. No one saw that coming. Pretending all of this history never happened isn’t going to lead to rational conclusions.
The US used to expend a lot of power ensuring its oil supply. It hasn’t needed to do that for a while. Now it expends power to control oil supplies to other countries. None of this applies to Venezuela though because Venezuelan oil has a dependency on US refineries that other oil producing countries don’t have.
Your argument, then, is the GP has a more recent and up to date grasp of geoplotics than the current POTUS?
The same POTUS with a 1930s grasp of tariffs?
What reason exists for the US to "bail out" Argentina? Was that as simple as extending time for those who contributed to the Presidential library fund to claw back their money from Argentina?
Modern geopolitics is all very well and good, but it falls well short of explaining some of blatently century old banana republic stuff going on in the current US administration.
There's also speculation that it may have lithium deposits because of it's location.
I would expect them to provide the proof that served as justification for the strike and an explatation as to why a strike rather than interdiction was lawful and justifiable.
Eg an intelligence source suggested this very boat was being being used by Bob the blow on such and such a date Bob was responsible for ordering the murder of 4 FBI agents and due to assets available it would have been a huge risk to our people and it might be difficult or impossible to local bob any time in the near future.
If need be this justification may be given secretly to a bipartisan group of lawmakers who assert vague but important findings like we believe that the strikes are justified and didn't kill innocent people.
as a general best practice, id expect them to send a patrol boat to go board and confiscate the drugs, then show off said drugs.
its not hard to collect the evidence of drugs, since the drugs will be on the boat/sub, and with the size of the deployment, there's more than enough capacity to just sail over to it, rather than destroying it with missiles.
Is this what's happening?
But that’s hard, unglamorous work, out of the limelight with people that are sick, addicted, grimy. No spectacular fireworks.
(Sorry for the rant)
Not sure what you would expect, but on a state level. My state has hundreds of millions in funding for free clinics, free treatment centers, free methadone clinics, free housing, and free welfare. If people really want to get clean, they can.
This isn't a problem of funding either on the state or federal level, its a bunch of NGO's getting rich making sure the situation continues by handing out free tents, clean needles, narcan and "safe zones" where people can do their drugs without interference.
When you make it easier to stay addicted and homeless? Those who are in that situation will continue to take the easy route. Its not easy getting clean and this is 100% on the individual to make the choice to get clean. When you encourage addiction and make it socially acceptable, is it any wonder this issue isn't getting any better and in fact, is well past a crisis point now.
There will also be those who try to take advantage of government funding. But the gross handouts to the Pentagon, we can and do audit NGOs. I doubt fraud is the biggest issue here, but if you have studies, please share them.
> Those who are in that situation will continue to take the easy route
Are you saying it's a personal choice and not a mental health problem?
> When you encourage addiction and make it socially acceptable
I don't understand how spending money on housing and addiction treatment is doing that. If you want to encourage addiction and make it socially acceptable, you just don't spend money on housing or treatment.
Its also not hard to see the video of a fast boat with two to four huge 250HP outboard motors and the entire hull filled with huge light colored bales of something and conclude this is not a fishing boat and these are not fishermen who are transporting their catch for the day back to the port.
Also, IIRC the first strike killed 11 people. Why would you need, or want, 11 people to crew a fast boat that's supposed to be clandestine. Is it possible that they were smuggling people instead of or in addition to drugs? In which case, maybe we just killed some migrants who wanted to get out of Venezuela.
Sucks for the 60 odd random peoples’ families that died though.
I think they murdered an innocent man, Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman. The President of Colombia himself personally advocated on his behalf; it's been all over international news. Does this stuff not diffuse into your echo chamber?
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-10-22/colombia...
> "On the same Saturday, Petro declared that U.S. officials “committed murder and violated sovereignty in territorial waters,” stating that the fisherman identified by RTVC as Alejandro Carranza had no connection to drug trafficking. In subsequent posts, the Colombian president has repeatedly emphasized that Carranza was a “humble fisherman.”"