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They aren’t trying to interdict! They’re just killing people.
- these boats are not in American waters. They are in their own, or neighbouring countries waters, and are being attacked by vessels whose home waters are 1000s of km's away
- they are not being interdicted (which is illegal kidnapping anyway, see above). They are just being killed. Plain and simple.
To put your argument back to you. Latin American countries who are combating narcotics trading armed paramilitarys, who are mostly getting their arms from US supply chains. So, for example, Mexico is entitled to go into US waters, and "interdict" American-owned boats with US citizens on board? Without any kind of warrant from even the Mexican courts, much less US courts?
Or, scratch that. Mexico just sinks them.
Should be ok, right?
The people who support this are not liberals when it comes to international affairs, even if they might be (but often are not) liberals at home. They know that they're violating international law. But they don't care because they do not value international law as it is currently constructed. They see it as an unjust imposition, made up by a bunch of lawyers and diplomats, that prevents them from securing their own interests.
Note, that's not the world I like to see. It's just the world we have.
But pointing out the outright hypocrisy of certain parties actions, vis a vis international law, natural law, or even "what if we flipped the tables?", is always worthwhile (I hope). Even if it's just shouting into the wind
There was only one Holocaust, the Shoah. Even if the Gaza events qualified as a genocide, a label that can be applied to many such events throughout time and place, that is still not a Holocaust.
> Extensive destruction of a group of animals or (especially) people; a large-scale massacre or slaughter.
However it's discussed if "Holocaust" is a good term to describe the Shoah:
> This use of the term has been criticised because it appears to imply that there was a voluntary religious purpose behind the Nazi actions
The Barbary Wars was an interesting case of how multiple naval forces were engaging in piracy etc against each other. Barbary vessels in the Med. British against US shipping (that, and press ganging sailors, was one of the public reason for the 1812 war). And, funnily enough, American privateers doing exactly the same thing to the British colonial shipping in the Caribbean (piracy plus press ganging)
In this current scenario, the only real connection would be that the US are the pirates.
For one thing, the US forces aren't even attempting to “interdict”, so the question has a false implicit premise.
Second, consider if it Venezuelan government vessels or aircraft attempting to “interdict” US vessels in US or international waters on the premise that they were suspected of running arms that might be used in Venezuela.
We have a navy precisely because people have tried to do this to us and we decided we'd rather own the water.
Just for a second consider Canada bombing a US vessel that they suspect is running drugs.
No one, directly.
Indirectly, undermining our own credibility when we try to foster a rule-based order that doesn't require constant resort to expensive (in both lives and treasure) applications of hard power, OTOH, will have a cost.
> And is that cost less or more than the cost of hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths?
It doesn't matter, because this campaign won't in any reasonable scenario prevent hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, it will just add a bunch of deaths from international armed conflict on top of it.
Okay this cost seems worth it.
As for who will make you pay: the future. That's how it's always been.
Remember how 9/11 was just a bunch of guys in a tent far away being pissed off at the USA and it caused you a national trauma that has pretty much set the country on a path of self destruction. Make no mistake: Bin Laden won the war, even if he got killed. And for peanuts. Right now the same is happening with Russia and the USA still has not learned its lesson: morality of action is important because otherwise there will be a reaction even if you can't image that the bill will be presented at some point.
As for my own country: we got stupendously lucky given all of the blood and the crimes this country is built on, not unlike the USA. But at least we refrain from giving the world the finger and pretending we're too big to fail (we're not). It really pays off to realize that the USA is not larger than the rest of the world and if you make enough enemies sooner or later they join up against you.
This is one of the reasons why people in general are well behaved, even the ones that don't have a good moral compass: they know that the future will catch up with them and that there usually is an interest component so it pays off to play nice.
You actually can. It's actually the standard way.
The rest of what you say is nonsense. The world pretended it was true in the post-WWII liberal world order, but it wasn't true then or now.