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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/white-house-admiral-approved-second-strike-boat-venezuela-was-well-within-legal-2025-12-01/

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/some-us-republicans-want-answers-venezuela-strikes-despite-trump-2025-12-01/

Aaand (after previously denying it?) the White House confirms that a second strike killed survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat. (Hegseth is joking about it) It even seems the purpose of the second strike was solely to leave no survivors.

Curious that the targeted smuggling boats have large crews, rather than conserving space and weight capacity for drugs...

  1. Anyone have a read on whether or not there are still "Trump is the anti-war President" true believers and, if so, how those people are trying to square the circle?

  2. The stupider this becomes, the more likely it seems that this conflict is a result of Trump's fixation with spoils of war and that he actually thinks we can literally just "take the oil."

The notorious Far Right rag, the NYT, has issued an article that pretty much backs what I've been saying: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/us/hegseth-drug-boat-strike-order-venezuela.html

According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth's directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.

The two officials questioned whether the surviving people were Admiral Bradley's intended target in the second strike, as opposed to the purported drugs and the disabled vessel. They argued that the purported cargo remained a threat and a lawful military target because another cartel-associated boat might have come to retrieve it.

The boat was the target of the second strike, not the people. Common sense prevails.

Seems kind of obvious, in retrospect.

I don't know where precisely the boat was intercepted, but if it was far enough from any land mass that a survivor probably couldn't swim to 'safety'... they were most likely going to die anyway?

Why waste a missile to double tap doomed men?

Unless the actual objection is now that the navy should have sent a rescue crew out to pick up anyone in the water which, hey, I'm willing to entertain, but that's a different question.

And on that topic, if there are survivors of a strike like this, is it more humane to leave them floating in the water to most likely die of exposure, drowning, or shark attack, or to do the double tap? Like, in a complete vacuum, which is more ethical?

I also note that the claims that these could be innocent fishermen or something have apparently evaporated.

Like, in a complete vacuum, which is more ethical?

Missiles are expensive. It's more ethical to not waste the tax dollars.

Send over a dude in a rubber dinghy armed with a rifle instead.

FA-18’s have autocannon and can just shoot them on-site.

Well that's why I'm asking 'in vacuum.'

Its like a trolley problem where the only options are "hit this button to kill them more or less instantly, therefore minimizing suffering, or don't hit the button and they die anyway, but hours or days later, maybe in agonizing pain."

One could argue that the latter might add some deterrent effect, which is arguably the TRUE point of doing this at all.

Anyway, my argument is that its up to VENEZUELA to stand up for their citizens if they think some international law was violated. But then they'd have to own that they're aware of these drug shimpments.

The fact that U.S. citizens and Politicians are the ones pushing for sanctions on U.S. troops... while Venezuela just goes through the motions of prepping for invasion is such odd optics.

Its like a trolley problem where the only options are "hit this button to kill them more or less instantly, therefore minimizing suffering, or don't hit the button and they die anyway, but hours or days later, maybe in agonizing pain."

I'm inclined to argue for the second on ethical grounds, honestly! If they ask for a mercy-kill it's a different matter, but I'm skeptical of the humaneness of "putting people out of their misery" when they haven't asked for it. Maybe they'd rather spend their remaining hours praying, thinking back over their life, or whatever else suits their conscience. Certainly I'd want to be given the option if I was in their place.

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