The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both.
“The administration has failed to explain the long-term objectives of this mission or provide any evidence of reduced drug flows into the United States,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said about the campaign on Thursday. “I would ask for a credible answer to this most fundamental question: What is the operation actually meant to accomplish?”
Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. These summary killings are a deviation from the standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement agencies generally detained suspected drug smugglers and brought them to trial on criminal charges.
Test the waters for what officers and enlisted men will not follow an unlawful orders. Or the other way, make sure that the people will follow orders they should not.
I genuinely think that’s what it’s for. Testing the waters (if you’ll pardon the pun) for pushback over what I would say is pretty blatant violation of international law and overall norms our Navy has abided for decades now regarding how we do or do not intercept and interact with these “drug boats”.
I would argue it’s pretty wrong and fucked up just on the face of it to straight murder people for drug trafficking and it still is against the law. Not that we seem to care anymore.
Even in some contrived scenario where they were flying a flag that said “cocaine on board for sure” and the dudes driving the boat all were clearly cracked out and swore they were gonna sell them off to someone in the USA - it still would be inhumane and improper to do what we are.
I’ll tell you one thing for sure, any sort of good will agreements or help we may have gotten from partners in South America is gone now. If the goal was to lessen the amount of drug use in the USA, hell even if it was simply to try to slow and control the supply - this is yielding the opposite result.
murder people SUSPECTED for drug trafficking.
But that was his point: even if it were 100.000000% blatantly obvious that they were guilty – or Hell, even if they were convicted of it in a legitimate jury trial – it would still be both illegal and morally wrong to execute them for it, let alone summarily!
Yes, that’s a good point.
PS:
I like your accuracy on the 100%. 👍
Oh I know that’s what makes it even worse. I’m just saying even if they were guilty of snuggling drugs the penalty shouldn’t be extrajudicial execution.
Absolutely, as someone wrote, it’s probably a test to see which officers will perform illegal orders.
There is no law under which this is legal.
All drugs need a good snuggling.
I saw the typo as soon as I hit post but I thought it was funny so kept it.
Drugs do need a good snuggle.