Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Kills by Claiming Targeting Drugs, Not People

> very obviously being used for one thing and one thing only

Can you explain this? I agree they are not fishing boats but I don't understand how anything beyond that is obvious. Is smuggling the only possible use for that boat? Are drugs the only thing that can be smuggled?

Great, then track them to their destination and make arrests. I can't conceive of any capital crime they've committed, can you? Plus, then there's a chance to disrupt someone other than the lowest-level operators.

Heh, I thought you were going to link to this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed...

Reading a GWOT era CIA book and.. you'll never guess where some of the guys responsible for this shootdown ended up next..

If I'm considering becoming a drug runner, and I hear "sometimes they arrest you" I'd say "so what?" If I hear "sometimes you get shot at", I'd take my chances and shoot back. But if I keep hearing about missiles obliterating drug runners with no warning... maybe I just stay home.

The great tragedy is that bullets are also more accurate.

I don't mean to be "that guy", but how do we even know the sailors on these boats aren't just some fishermen working for the cartels because they have a guy at his shack with a gun on his mother and siblings or kids? Or, even worse, what if they aren't working for cartels at all? Just went out to try to fish.

I'm not sure what our endgame is here, but just eyeballing this from the outside it looks like we're doing surgery with chainsaws instead of scalpels.

And all that assumes that our government is actually trying to help. Our end goal could be something else entirely? It's all just mystifying right now? I'm not sure anyone could give a coherent explanation of the why's, and I'm just about certain that no one could give a rational explanation of the how.

I don't think this Administration/Executive Branch recognizes Puerto Rico (populace) to be American or part of the U.S. except only in as much as it can do whatever it wants there.

Maybe so, but the administration claims that these people are not just drug smugglers, but narco-terrorists.

Normally, suspected drug smugglers should be interdicted, boarded, and inspected. The Coast Guard and U.S. Navy train for this. It's standard operating procedure.

It's not normal to destroy boats which don't pose any immediate threat. It would be acceptable to fire on a boat which refuses to permit boarding and inspection, assuming the interdiction itself is legal under maritime law.

Unless there is an imminent threat, you've got to give people a course of action which they can take to avoid their vessel being fired upon: turn back, change course, submit to boarding and inspection, etc.

Having lost a fried to drugs, I hear your pain.

I don't see how killing a lot of fishermen and destroying their families alleviates this pain.

There might have been drugs on the boats, but maybe not. No one bothered to check first.

The fishermen might have been part-time drug smugglers, maybe not. How do we know? What investigation was done?

And if we really believe that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

then taking away people's lives without due process is murder. Cold blooded, premeditated murder. That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them.

Friend, don't let your pain blind you to causing more pain. Ethics is hard.

This is not a useful conversation because there is no way to know that any drugs have been destroyed. The issue at hand is that the government is blowing up unidentified boats full of unidentified people. Talking about the harmful effects of drugs is a complete non-sequitur until there is some convincing reason to believe that drugs are involved.

> People who have lost someone (either through death or just throwing their life away) to drugs will tell you these "poor fishermen" are murderers

Just to be clear-- we're talking about a hypothetical family member of a potential future victim of drug overdose who was unwittingly saved based on fully trusting the federal government's claim that their extra-judicial killing stopped the international trade of illicit drugs as opposed to killing innocent fishermen.

Did I correctly label all the global mutable state in your example?

I get and agree with your non-sequitur that there's a clear difference between drug mules and fishermen, I just don't see the relevance of that to the danger of leveraging these post-9/11 counterterrorism laws (and secret interpretations of them) to carry out extra-judicial killings.

Edit: to be extra clear-- the whole point of meaningful democratic oversight in this case is to be able to meaningfully care, measure and review the difference between drug mules and fishermen. The entire modern history of secret interpretations of counterterrorism laws tells us that without this basic oversight, the government will always claim they only target the murderers. Worse, they'll use the veil of national security to hide the fact that innocent victims are jailed, tortured, and killed through the same counterterrorism programs.

Would you accept other countries blowing up Americans because some Americans bring drugs and other things into other countries?

I'd argue a missing social safety net combined with grossly inadequate public education, no job opportunities, unaffordable healthcare and housing, and a prison system designed to punish all drive people to take drugs. Drug addiction is just the symptom. Let's focus on giving people real hope and value and meaning in their lives, from birth to death, instead of killing people, without trial, a world away.

> Im not actually in support of killing these people but I have to say, people seem to gloss over that each boatload of these drugs literally destroys multiple American families.

So does alcohol. (And a whole bunch of other domestically-produced stuff.)

How much effort is being put into the demand-side of the equation?

These boats aren't even headed to the United States.

If you kill yourself with drugs, nobody murdered you. That's a stupid way to approach things.

What makes you assume they own the boat?

Doesn't seem like this survivor has much money.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/22/americas/caribbean-strike-sur...

true and teh Supreme Court having been packed by trump admin #1 and an incompetent democratic leadership or rather Sith-lord 5D chess playing Mitch mcconell blocking appointments to the court ... isn't helping protect the rule of law much at all.

Midterms are next year. Think about who you want in Congress and vote appropriately.