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The United States Navy is conducting a full-scale search-and-destroy campaign against alleged drug smugglers in the waters off Latin America and posting the results on Twitter.
The strikes have been going on for almost two months now and have killed over 50 people if Wikipedia is to be believed. I had no idea this was even an option. It turns out that You Can Just Do Things™.
I think that these are all probably smugglers of some kind. I have seen speculation that the some of the crew counts are higher than one would expect for drug running, which could imply human trafficking (consensual or otherwise) as well. If any of these boats were conducting legitimate business I suspect we would have had receipts by now.
The legal justification, to the extent that anyone cares about that anymore, seems to be that:
Drug cartels are terrorist organizations.
These boats contained cartel members targeting the United States (with drugs).
Therefore, these boats contained terrorists targeting the United States (with drugs).
This seems kinda flimsy, but again, does anyone actually care? Democrats are backed into a corner here. They will probably lose if they attempt to litigate whether or not these boats were actually smuggling drugs, but the other strategy would be to condemn the strikes under the legal technicality that they weren’t authorized by congress, even though the boats were smuggling drugs. This makes them look like exactly the kind of out-or touch institutionalists that voters hate.
My understanding is that drug running boats are designed differently from a boat that would be used for other civilian purpose- they're semisubmersible cargo vessels, introducing mechanical complexity that requires a bigger crew than 'pilot, navigator, relief shifts, maybe a cook'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine
That is... not a fishing vessel. I'd also point out that an organization that can run a submarine R&D program and build it's own shipyards is one which is not going away- a lot of first worlders think of Latin American cartels as big gangs, but the crips ain't doing that. An organization that designs and builds submersible stealth oceangoing cargo ships to carry narcotics into the first world is big enough to justify a lot more force than some guys in a rowboat trying to make a drop in a wildlife refuge nobody ever goes to.
The video on Wikipedia, which I believe is the first strike, is a normal-looking speedboat. I expect those are a lot more common than the crazy submarines. They’re just not as newsworthy.
The videos I've seen of the drug strikes haven't been on narco-subs, but have been on go-fasts. Assuming SecDef hasn't been completely lying about the location of the strikes in the video... there are very, very few other reasons to be in that part of the open ocean in a go-fast without a motheryacht nearby.*
And if you've got the money for a yacht and auxiliary go-fast... well, maybe you are a drug smuggler, but you're sure as hell not the one personally smuggling them.
*Granted, kinetic strikes on the whole boat is a step up from the previous interdiction methods, which are a) USCG boarding team, or b) USCG sniper in a helicopter with an anti-materiel rifle, and my understanding is that in the latter case, the smugglers will sometimes try to interpose themselves between the chopper and the engines in the (usually true) hope that the Coast Guard will hesitate to kill someone just to stop a smuggler.
“Very few other reasons” is also not a good standard for regular use of deadly force. If you’re not actively at war, which we are not (certain Mexican cartels are functionally at war with the Mexican military but not our own), then if not a beyond reasonable doubt standard, you need to be in that similar ballpark. That innocent reasons are unlikely does not make them impossible.
The entire point of having a different standard for actual war is that different standards inherently apply. But philosophically and legally, using wartime standards because you’ve used some kind of indirect killing logic is a terrible, terrible precedent. Actual terror groups have histories of directly and intentionally killing Americans, and so there is legally and philosophically more latitude. Drug cartels sell drugs to other people, who sell those drugs to Americans, who occasionally misuse the drugs and kill themselves (which the cartels don’t even want to happen because it deprives them of ongoing revenue)*. That’s… morally still somewhat direct, but the famously law is about far more than just morality. Doubly so when it comes to lethal force, something which definitionally is irreversible in multiple ways. Which, weirdly, is under appreciated in our society today.
(*Vertical integration among cartels varies widely and intentionality can vary, so there’s a theoretical maximalist case where a completely vertically integrated cartel deliberately laces their drugs with lethal doses and use false marketing to directly sell them to Americans only, but that’s not even something the Trump admin has bothered to argue and is highly implausible to boot).
This is the evidence by which we, as individuals without any privileged information, must judge the situation. It's not (I very much hope) the sum-total of the evidence by which the administration is making these determinations. They haven't presented that evidence to the public... but they obviously wouldn't if its means of acquisition was at all circumspect. This administration has proven... erratic on certain matters, but they presumably would at least consult military intelligence regarding their targets, and I have pretty high hopes the NSA is capable of identifying genuine cartel vessels; is their security better than Iran's nuclear program?
None of which is to say we should just trust the process -- they've certainly made mistakes before -- and that's not to say the strikes are justified conditional on the targets being as described. Just that, pending evidence to the contrary, I think these likely are cartel vessels.
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