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Notes -
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...
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?
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 story I heard is thag Trump asked for the boat to be destroyed, and someone down the chain of command decided to shoot a second missile, which technically did not voilate his orders. There's a lot of leeway in ways to destroy the boat, and legally I can't see the difference between shooting the boat while it was undamaged, versus shooting it after it was damaged by a missile but still floating.
Anyways clearly the intention is to kill the people on those boats, so any screeching that the survivors were finished off will fall on deaf ears. Anyone who wants those people dead is still happy, and anyone who thinks we should give drug smugglers free reign is not.
There is zero credible argument that these aren't smuggling boats. Even the most biased anti-Trump news isn't making that claim.
You know that's not the actual argument being made right? There's a lot of room between "just blow up boats because we said they had drugs" and "do nothing"
Most of the concern is whether or not they're even carrying drugs, something that the admin has not been forthcoming with evidence for to the extent that they even send back survivors instead of prosecuting them.
But ok, let's say that they are drug boats. Is the response to that calling them terrorists and murdering them anyway? People who sell drugs are not killing people, because drugs can not kill people in the same way guns can not just kill people. Drug deaths are suicides by the irresponsible drug users, whether on purpose or on accident. People may feel shameful if their father or brother or daughter or whoever ends up as a druggie and ODs, but blaming the person who sold them the drugs is like when leftists blame gun stores for shootings.
That doesn't mean we should or have to be legalizing them, there is no constitutional right to either use or sell drugs but the argument being used currently by the Trump admin is one of poor victims who aren't responsible for their own drug additions, and they need to be protected from the "terrorists" who provide the druggies the goods they want. An easier way to think about it is with a lesser harm, like if someone were to proclaim we should start rounding up Nestle and Coca Cola shareholders for victimizing poor Americans with obesity, because offering high sugar snacks and drinks is damaging their health. It's the same logic, they provide an addictive product that Americans use to hurt themselves with so are they not corn syrup terrorists?
We could ban high glycemic index products and we could punish people who kept selling them anyway because likewise there is no constitutional right to them. But calling the sellers terrorists for something the "victims" choose to do to themselves is nonsense. We ban those products so people can't hurt themselves from their own stupid decisions.
I don't find this convincing, for the same reason that a gun dealer smuggling weapons into Somalia is, as far as I'm concerned, killing people. Sure, they didn't shoot anyone. "Guns don't kill people, people do, unless it's a Sig" etc etc.
More importantly, drugs aren't made alike. A group of college kids or business people doing lines of coke in a bathroom stall aren't trying to kill themselves, any more than someone ordering a shot of vodka is. Unfortunately, due to the sheer ridiculous potency of fentanyl, even microscopic contamination, say the dealer being less than scrupulous about washing hands, can leave those poor bastards ODing on the floor.
Drugs are not made alike. Someone smoking weed, doing coke or dropping molly before a concert is in a very different reference class to people shooting up heroin/fent or smoking crack pipes.
Accidental ODing from taking an entirely different drug is closer to dying of a peanut allergy after ordering gummy bears. It's not suicide.
I particularly dislike fent because it's like the Worst Drug Imaginable, and because it screws over even people who want to stay away from it. Thankfully it's not common in the UK, and the Albanians keep the coke clean.
There are people who make the argument that gun sellers should be held responsible for anything done with their product, but it's generally laughed out of American society. Especially by the right wing, given the long history of focusing on personal responsibilities.
But how about the other examples then? Are sugar companies terrorists? Are the tobacco and alcohol companies terrorists? They're all dangerous unhealthy products that get misused and abused, causing health damage and even death.
They're not as dangerous as most drugs sure, but they are pretty dangerous. Alcohol just off a quick Google search is estimated at "approximately 178,000 deaths per year are linked to excessive alcohol use.". That's 178k lives annually, some of them course not even the drinkers own life like people hit by drunk driving. Were the teens in my high school hit and killed by drunk drivers years ago victims of Alcohol-terrorism by the store who sold the drunk a dangerous product? Kids died because of it, so using the same logic it seems like a yes. I'm sure the alcohol manufacturers were well aware that some of their drunk customers go on to drunk drive and hit other people at times.
If by "laughed out of society", you mean an opinion fervently held and actively implemented by half the country, in which pursuit they have proven willing and able to violate black-letter federal law and support the murder of innocents.
Drugs are not equivalent to guns. Drug dealing is not a victimless crime. Drug Cartels are a very close aproximate to classical examples of Hostis Humani Generis. But more damningly, even if these facts were not the case, even if the equivalency you are drawing were not entirely spurious, I am confident that you personally would be willing to offer people like them significantly more protection from the law than people like me no matter what I or my side says or does now or in the future, so I do not recognize value in preserving some hypothetical form of detente here. You will never be willing to treat me and mine with the care and respect you steadfastly insist must apply to narcoterrorists.
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