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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."
Am I understanding this correctly that striking the boat and killing everyone would be fine and legal, striking the boat and killing a bunch and letting the rest drown or be eaten by sharks is fine and legal. But sending in a second strike to "finish the job", that is crossing a line, that is a war crime, Hegseth must be sent to the Hague for hanging?
I could see being upset about the initial strike, if there was another available option to intercept the boat, try the drug dealers, and hang them under law. It is better to go the extra mile to show you aren't making mistakes and accidentally striking innocent boaters.
But making the second strike the point of outrage? Yawn, don't care.
Killing the crew of a disabled ship in the water absolutely is a war crime, and a pretty serious one at that. You could hang for doing something like this in the past (I’m not sure if there are examples of this actually happening, just speaking to the attitude historically taken toward the issue). I believe this was codified at The Hague at the turn of the 20th century but it was generally accepted convention for a long, long time before that as well.
Simply firing two missiles at the boat would not be a war crime (well, there’s an argument to be made that these operations in general constitute extrajudicial executions more than warfare, I personally have mixed thoughts about it, but obviously for this discussion we’re assuming the combat itself is legitimate). The crime is from firing once, confirming the boat is disabled and sinking, noticing survivors in the water, then firing again to finish them off. This is unambiguously a war crime today and has always been considered egregious misconduct. Even if you were fighting against pirates, back in the day, you wouldn’t order your marines to shoot the survivors of a sinking ship out of the water. That would be dishonorable. You would be expected to rescue them and take them prisoner, and perhaps then execute them in an orderly manner if deemed appropriate.
The concept is the same as how you don’t shoot at a pilot who has ejected from a shot-down plane, and is therefore no longer part of the battle. If you kill him in the process of shooting him down, c’est la vie, but if he bails out and you circle back to blow him away on his parachute, that’s beyond the pale.
I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, I'm pretty sure that if the ship still has significant ability to fight despite it's disability, a belligerent would be permitted, under the rules of war, to continue attacking the ship until it no longer poses a threat. Even if the continued attacks will inevitably result in crew deaths.
In my experience, the rules of war contain very few bright line safe harbor rules. Because such rules inevitably would invite abuse.
That being said, I am happy to consider your claim with an open mind. Can you please provide a specific cite to the provision of international law which you believe applies here?
If this is your claim, that it's a war crime to specifically attack the survivors of a ship that is disabled and sinking, then this is a more defensible position. But note that you changed two facts: (1) you changed the ship from merely "disabled" to "disabled and sinking"; and (2) you changed the attack from one which knowingly killed the crew (but perhaps was done for other reasons) to one where the point of the follow-up attack was to kill the surviving crew.
So I guess I would ask you to set forth what exactly you believe to be a war crime. Because I suspect you are setting up a motte and bailey argument. An attack directed at surviving crew of a disabled and sinking ship can be argued to be a war crime, but it's pretty unlikely that's what happened here. A follow-up attack on a partially disabled ship (which happened to kill the remaining crew) is more likely what actually happened, but that's much harder to argue to be a war crime.
So again: What is the exact war crime you are alleging here and do you have a cite?
Appreciate the thoughtful response -- I don't think we actually disagree very much here.
Agreed. I was using "disabled" to mean "firmly out of action", i.e. removed from combat and neutralized as a threat. So:
The ship literally sinking is not necessarily part of my claim, it could be dead in the water, but I agree that if the enemy ship is still moving or shooting it is plainly a legitimate target. I would phrase my claim as "it is a war crime to intentionally attack the surviving crew of a ship which has been neutralized or sunk."
I am not a lawyer and at best an armchair historian, but yes, I was able to find this portion of the Geneva Conventions, which should at least be illustrative: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gcii-1949/article-12/commentary/2017. This comes from the 1949 version of the Conventions; I believe that there is some similar provision in older versions or in some other older treaty, I think from the Hague in 1899, but I couldn't immediately find a source for that. It is considered applicable today, in any case. I also believe there are similar provisions in some other treaties (e.g. UNCLOS) but again I think the Geneva Conventions are illustrative enough on their own (also, if memory serves, the USA is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions but not of UNCLOS anyway). I am fairly confident that what is formalized in the Geneva Conventions was considered the proper way of doing things by custom for a long time, but I admittedly don't have a source at hand for that, it's just from my vaguely recollected history knowledge. Regardless, the historical aspect is only tangential to what is being discussed here.
Anyway. The relevant portion is the discussion of "wounded, sick, and shipwrecked" combatants, under Article 12. The set of [wounded, sick, and shipwrecked] is used throughout the convention as a coherent category, and in short the point of the convention is that [wounded, sick, and shipwrecked] enemy personnel should be rescued as POWs and given medical attention, to the best of the ability of the prisoner-taking side, and generally treated as required by all other protections for POWs. This is all pretty clear and straightforward, so what is at issue here is who counts as "shipwrecked". This is defined as follows:
Further:
And:
So, this quite directly supports my claim. If a US Navy officer ordered a follow-up strike on a neutralized ship in order to kill its crew, that would indeed be a war crime. Crucially, for the act to be criminal, the victorious party must knowingly fire on a disabled ship, and that's what's really at issue in the present case. The Geneva Convention discusses repeatedly that it is important for the defeated crew to be "refraining from hostilities", which generally seems to be interpreted as not firing (not remotely at issue here) and not maneuvering or otherwise attempting to complete a mission. This is what I was trying to get at in my first post. If the Navy simply fired two missiles at the boat, one after the other, that clearly would not be a war crime. If the Navy fired on the boat, believed it to still be operational, then fired again to sink it, this would not be a war crime. If the Navy fired on the boat, confirmed through surveillance that it was disabled but had survivors, then fired again to finish off the crew, this would be a war crime.
You dismiss the second case as "pretty unlikely", but that is exactly what the Navy/DoD is being accused of doing, which is why it is being treated as a Big Deal. In previous strikes on drug boats the Navy has released very clear targeting footage from drones and other aircraft showing the weapon impacts and aftermath, so it's unrealistic to think that they outright could not see the boat. In the absence of any released targeting footage it is impossible for the public to determine conclusively whether a war crime was committed. All we know for a fact is that two missiles were fired at the boat. If targeting footage shows two swift impacts that would plainly disprove a war crime. If targeting footage shows an impact, then a clear view of a burning boat with crew either on the deck or in the water, then another impact, that would prove a war crime, or at least would be very strong evidence. They would have to somehow prove that the second shot was fired without knowing that the boat was disabled and/or without knowing there were surviving crew members.
I've heard talk the the survivors reboarded the not-disabled boat and tried to recover the
drugscargo. If that is true, does it moot everything you've said thus far?You can see the pictures now, they've released some of them. It was obviously a drug running boat, and the only reason it would be something else is if they were running guns instead.
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