US strike campaign against drug boats tops 200 deaths | Hacker News Reader

US strike campaign against drug boats tops 200 deaths

independent.co.uk

28 pointsasdefghyk18 comments

This title editorializes. They are _alleged_ drug boats.

I think if you read it as "campaign meant for drug boats," it isn't editorialized. The actual boats struck are alleged drug boats indeed; the stated desire was to only hit actual "drug boats."

At any rate, even if all the boats struck were carrying drugs in violation of American law, murdering the crew is still not an acceptable form of punishment.

If the desire were in any way to hit only actual drug boats then the boats would receive due process instead of murder. It is definitionally a campaign meant for alleged drug boats.

> even if all the boats struck were carrying drugs in violation of American law, murdering the crew is still not an acceptable form of punishment.

Agreed.

The rationale (don’t karma kill the messenger for not liking my saying so) is that they are a foreign power invading the United States with the illicit intentions of doing catastrophic harm.

If any of this is fentanyl then it is very accurate to say that it leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths. And we've seen a very good decrease in fentanyl deaths -- though that could also be attributed to the higher availability of Narcan.

Fentanyl remains a primary driver of overdose deaths, with synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, accounting for 60% of all overdose deaths in the United States last year, totaling about 48,000 people. While opioid overdose deaths remain high, there has been a decrease in fentanyl-involved deaths from 2023 to 2024. More National Fentanyl Overdose Data The CDC reports a 35.6% decrease in synthetic opioid overdose deaths from 2023 to 2024.

>Fentanyl remains a primary driver of overdose deaths

You missed a few steps here: fentanyl isn't injecting itself magically into drug users when it arrives in the USA.

>we've seen a very good decrease in fentanyl deaths -- though that could also be attributed to the higher availability of Narcan.

And also just the fact there are less and less fentanyl drug users still alive.

BTW, what happened to the members of the Sackler family?

I think you mean they are _allegedly_ a foreign power _allegedly_ invading the United States with the _alleged_ illicit intentions of doing catastrophic harm.

The current title of the source: “Despite killing 200 people in attacks on suspected drug boats, US has done little to slow drug trade, experts say”

"suspected" is a key word in that title.

RE"... title editorializes...." I agree. It seems I can not edit the title now.

But the months-long attacks have reportedly done little to combat the flow of illicit drugs into the country, raising questions about the effectiveness of an operation that law of war experts say amounts to extrajudicial killings and war crimes.

There weren't a lot of drugs stashed in the fish coming up fresh in the nets:

Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on ‘narcoterrorists’ https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/apr/21/e...

Im shocked that in some cases there have been survivors of these attackes and then their has been another attack where these survivors have died .

Which is pretty much a war crime. In the case where they didn’t do that, they deported them anywhere but to American soil. Cant have them accidentally speaking in a court or to reporters.

Well, as a vegan I do appreciate the Trump administration’s protection of sentient fish.

At the same time, as a vegan, I don’t appreciate their lack of interest in the autonomy and lives of the sentient humans.

If you kept listening to experts, El Salvador would still be a crime ridden hellhole. Being tough on crime shows results and sends a message.

Let's say what happens in a decade or to. All injustices have a weird way of hitting back decades after.

Tough on which crimes, exactly? Has there been any proof that the 200 killed were drug dealers? What did Trump's DOJ did wrt. the Sackler family?

War crimes are - as their name clearly shows - crimes. If I follow your logic, every American soldier who participated in these should get the death penalty, yes?

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