It does get very complicated when you consider they're probably under a lot of "carrot AND stick" from the cartels... but the damage they do is real.
It does get very complicated when you consider they're probably under a lot of "carrot AND stick" from the cartels... but the damage they do is real.
I don't see how killing a lot of fishermen and destroying their families alleviates this pain.
There might have been drugs on the boats, but maybe not. No one bothered to check first.
The fishermen might have been part-time drug smugglers, maybe not. How do we know? What investigation was done?
And if we really believe that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
then taking away people's lives without due process is murder. Cold blooded, premeditated murder. That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them.
Friend, don't let your pain blind you to causing more pain. Ethics is hard.
> That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them
I am pretty sure the 14 people who died weren't smuggling in 14 doses of fentanyl, is killing someone a worse crime than selling 100,000 people a drug that might kill them, and will guaranteed fuck up their lives, their families lives, and their community?
Or you think only US persons are deserving of such?
Just to be clear-- we're talking about a hypothetical family member of a potential future victim of drug overdose who was unwittingly saved based on fully trusting the federal government's claim that their extra-judicial killing stopped the international trade of illicit drugs as opposed to killing innocent fishermen.
Did I correctly label all the global mutable state in your example?
I get and agree with your non-sequitur that there's a clear difference between drug mules and fishermen, I just don't see the relevance of that to the danger of leveraging these post-9/11 counterterrorism laws (and secret interpretations of them) to carry out extra-judicial killings.
Edit: to be extra clear-- the whole point of meaningful democratic oversight in this case is to be able to meaningfully care, measure and review the difference between drug mules and fishermen. The entire modern history of secret interpretations of counterterrorism laws tells us that without this basic oversight, the government will always claim they only target the murderers. Worse, they'll use the veil of national security to hide the fact that innocent victims are jailed, tortured, and killed through the same counterterrorism programs.
> The boats get hit and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean, it’s like floating in bags, it’s all over the place.
- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/trump-venezuela-car...
Here are the videos he's referring to, let me know if you see any bags of fentanyl: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1151367989097..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1152335554451..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153737518118..., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153966324414...
Beyond this administration, the US government has a documented history of lying about the justification for military action. When people are being killed it is irresponsible to assume, with no evidence, that they are telling the truth this time.
I am not assuming the strikes are baseless, I am stating that there is no evidence for any basis, so discussing if they might be justified if some hypothetical evidence existed is pointless.
If these are really narco-terrorists, then some evidence should be released justifying their execution on the high seas.
If youre implying the people being killed are innocent countrymen of the real criminals then of course I object. Everything I have said applies to people actually comitting crimes
Seems rather incompatible with a justice system, and hard to distinguish from random military action.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Also, there's great reasons to have punishments for crimes that are not just summary executions. Even if you have a warped morality where all criminals of any sort should die, there's _still_ great reasons to not allow that to be chosen by the closest person with a gun. That way lies chaos and corruption.
So does alcohol. (And a whole bunch of other domestically-produced stuff.)
How much effort is being put into the demand-side of the equation?
They also gloss over the fact that alcohol does the same. But I don't think it's bizarre to allow people to make their own decisions.
When alcohol was criminalized, many people would go blind from impurities in their own homebrews. Legalization and regulation are good things to prevent some of the unintended consequences, like deaths from adulteration with fentanyl, hotspots, and so on.
Now none of them are.
The pragmatic approach is that we're spending far too much money blowing up small boats which could be better invested in actually fixing our healthcare system and other domestic issues, with decent odds of going to war and spending even more money because of it. The empathetic side is that these are just fishermen that aren't even involved in this whole shitshow getting killed for political points by a bloodthirsty and stupid admin.