U.S. destroys Venezuelan vessels | Secret notice of “armed conflict” with some cartels

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nycfan said:
This callous quote really struck me from Trump yesterday — how he is bemused about ordinary fishermen being in fear of their lives b/c the Trump military might mistake them for drug dealers and blow them up.

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This is another exemplar of the most remarkable and frustrating thing about Trump as a person and a politician: his propensity to just openly admit to doing corrupt, horrific, and/or illegal things, and be so brazen about it that his supporters just assume that the things he's doing must not be corrupt, horrific, and/or illegal because if they were he wouldn't be admitting it. Like, the reasoning literally seems to go in their brain: "Someone is telling me this is a horrific or corrupt illegal thing. But if it was horrific or corrupt or illegal Trump would be hiding it, not admitting it. Because he's admitting it, it must be OK." It is absolutely maddening, and I really hope it's just something about his personality that allows him to get away with it over and over again, rather than him having unlocked a blueprint that others will follow.

Like, Trump here is just coming out and saying: "Yes, I understand that regular people with boats in the Caribbean are in danger from my wanton drone strikes, isn't that funny" when anyone with a brain trying to justify these actions would be saying "there's no reason for anyone who isn't smuggling drugs to be afraid, we are only striking when we have absolute certainty." But instead of people being outraged because he is openly admitting one of the many problems with this, they just shrug. As I said, maddening.
 
Here is a good article about this, BTW:

defector.com

How Do You Stop A Serial Killer? | Defector

Welcome to Margin of Error, a politics column from Tom Scocca, editor of the Indignity newsletter. Monday, on social media, President Donald Trump announced that he had murdered three people—”three male terrorists killed in action” was how he put it. By “terrorists,” the president meant nothing...
defector.com defector.com

This paragraph gets sort of to the point I was making above:

Those other presidents, though, went to the effort of trying to construct a legal framework for their killings, however tenuous or spurious it might have been, or they committed their atrocities in secret and tried to keep them covered up. The Trump administration did not even pretend to have authorization for the killings, and Trump announced each one himself, accompanied by video of the deed. The legal rationale, as delivered by the vice president, was "I don't give a shit what you call it"; the practical rationale, from Trump himself, was that "300 million people died last year from drugs."
 
rodoheel said:
This is another exemplar of the most remarkable and frustrating thing about Trump as a person and a politician: his propensity to just openly admit to doing corrupt, horrific, and/or illegal things, and be so brazen about it that his supporters just assume that the things he's doing must not be corrupt, horrific,
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Yes, I agree and that goes to a point I've been making: you can't speak truth to power if power doesn't care.

I think it's more that his supporters just don't care about the law or legality. Look at ZZLPHeels and what he's said about the police officer convicted after emptying a magazine blind into an apartment. He says the guy should get a pardon. Whether it was illegal doesn't matter to him.

How many times has it been explained to our resident mooks that the law requires asylum seekers to get a hearing, and it's the waiting list on our underfunded immigration court system that creates the spike in "illegals?" More times than I can count. They don't care.

These are the same people who never cared about the guarantee of equality under the 14th amendment. The same people who cheer torture despite it being clearly against the law.
 
sringwal said:
Law


Easier to understand explaination:
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Again, I am not saying that murdering (alleged) drug dealers in international waters is legal. It is not. I am saying it is no less illegal than murdering (alleged) "terrorists" in the middle east using drones. It is the same thing. It doesn't become more illegal or more egregious simply because the victims are on water.
 
Calheel said:
Again, I am not saying that murdering (alleged) drug dealers in international waters is legal. It is not. I am saying it is no less illegal than murdering (alleged) "terrorists" in the middle east using drones. It is the same thing. It doesn't become more illegal or more egregious simply because the victims are on water.
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Aren't there some more variables to this? Like whether Congress has passed an AUMF, for example?
 
Calheel said:
Again, I am not saying that murdering (alleged) drug dealers in international waters is legal. It is not. I am saying it is no less illegal than murdering (alleged) "terrorists" in the middle east using drones. It is the same thing. It doesn't become more illegal or more egregious simply because the victims are on water.
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I agree, but... the problem with doing it on international waters is that there is no clear "who they belong to." Attacking a country threatens that country. Attacking at sea threatens everyone.
 
Calheel said:
Again, I am not saying that murdering (alleged) drug dealers in international waters is legal. It is not. I am saying it is no less illegal than murdering (alleged) "terrorists" in the middle east using drones. It is the same thing. It doesn't become more illegal or more egregious simply because the victims are on water.
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The problem with attacking the boat with the 11 people on it is that there is no way due diligence was done to make sure the boat was indeed carrying drugs. Such boats do not carry 11 people on board. A good example of using a drone in the Middle East to take someone out was the case of Jihadi John. US intelligence tracked him down and made sure we knew where he was. The film from the drone showed a man getting into an SUV. The vehicle rolls a few feet and is hit by a rocket fired from the drone. ISIS admitted not long after the attack that he had been killed. If you are going to use lethal force, you need to make damn certain you are taking out bad guys (like Jihadi John). You cannot act on just a hunch or an unconfirmed belief. That is what happened in this case.
 
Patb78 said:
The problem with attacking the boat with the 11 people on it is that there is no way due diligence was done to make sure the boat was indeed carrying drugs. Such boats do not carry 11 people on board. A good example of using a drone in the Middle East to take someone out was the case of Jihadi John. US intelligence tracked him down and made sure we knew where he was. The film from the drone showed a man getting into an SUV. The vehicle rolls a few feet and is hit by a rocket fired from the drone. ISIS admitted not long after the attack that he had been killed. If you are going to use lethal force, you need to make damn certain you are taking out bad guys (like Jihadi John). You cannot act on just a hunch or an unconfirmed belief. That is what happened in this case.
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What do you think we’ve been doing in the Middle East since 9/11? Do you think we’ve been doing due diligence when we bomb Afghan wedding parties? This is not new American behavior.
 
Calheel said:
What do you think we’ve been doing in the Middle East since 9/11? Do you think we’ve been doing due diligence when we bomb Afghan wedding parties? This is not new American behavior.
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No. Of course not. Didn’t mean to give that impression. I’m just pointing out a case where the use of lethal force was used in the correct manner. That’s why such force should only be used when you know with all reasonable certainty what you are shooting at.
 
Calheel said:
What do you think we’ve been doing in the Middle East since 9/11? Do you think we’ve been doing due diligence when we bomb Afghan wedding parties? This is not new American behavior.
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Actually, bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico….oops, Gulf of Trump…..that is new.

I’m not saying our actions in the Middle East were good or proper or legal.

I’m saying blowing up boats off Venezuela is new……and illegal under international law.
 
Zoo_View said:
Actually, bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico….oops, Gulf of Trump…..that is new.

I’m not saying our actions in the Middle East were good or proper or legal.

I’m saying blowing up boats off Venezuela is new……and illegal under international law.
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It’s new in geography, not in morality.
 
Calheel said:
It’s new in geography, not in morality.
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Well, I think someone has already mentioned this -- but one obvious difference is that the drones are not launching missiles at commercially important areas.

Once you start sinking ships without warning or cause, it starts to chill commerce on the high seas. And that's a very different effect from anything that happens from a drone.

I would also say that most of our international maritime law -- and a hell of a lot of domestic maritime law as well -- has been structured around the idea of piracy. And IIRC (I did a lot of research on piracy for a case a long time ago but I don't remember the details) piracy was the first action declared to be contrary to the "Law Of Nations." That is, international law only exists because of piracy on the high seas.

So for the US to engage in piracy -- which is what this is, piracy not actually requiring any seizure of the vessel; sinking it is also piracy -- would be a big deal.
 
superrific said:
Well, I think someone has already mentioned this -- but one obvious difference is that the drones are not launching missiles at commercially important areas.

Once you start sinking ships without warning or cause, it starts to chill commerce on the high seas. And that's a very different effect from anything that happens from a drone.

I would also say that most of our international maritime law -- and a hell of a lot of domestic maritime law as well -- has been structured around the idea of piracy. And IIRC (I did a lot of research on piracy for a case a long time ago but I don't remember the details) piracy was the first action declared to be contrary to the "Law Of Nations." That is, international law only exists because of piracy on the high seas.

So for the US to engage in piracy -- which is what this is, piracy not actually requiring any seizure of the vessel; sinking it is also piracy -- would be a big deal.
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If we start bombing the Panama Canal or cargo ships, I could see an impact on commerce. Right now, the primary commerce impact will be fewer Venezuelan fishermen in those waters.

Obviously, this is new and bad. I just see as a change in degree as opposed to kind. In particular, the extrajudicial killing aspect of this military action is well trod ground.
 
Calheel said:
If we start bombing the Panama Canal or cargo ships, I could see an impact on commerce. Right now, the primary commerce impact will be fewer Venezuelan fishermen in those waters.

Obviously, this is new and bad. I just see as a change in degree as opposed to kind. In particular, the extrajudicial killing aspect of this military action is well trod ground.
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Degree as opposed to kind is fair. And while the impact on commerce of these particular attacks might be small (though see below), my point was generally about the difference between the law of piracy (which is international) and the law against drone strikes (which is much more questionable internationally), as well as the policy differences in general.

Here's the question: what will insurers do? Will they insure ships in that area? Those big ships are incredibly expensive and insurers would take a HUGE loss if one were sunk by the US.
 
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