I’m not seeing much coverage of this outrage. The officer in charge obeyed an illegal order to blow up the vessel. As has been said elsewhere, eleven people to deliver drugs makes no sense. And it was hundreds of miles from the US, giving them ample time to intercept. trump wanted to send a message, and he did. He’s a mass murderer.
Any chance you could provide a link to a news story about this?
Deadly US obliteration of Venezuelan drug boat may not be the last, Trump admin ominously warns
Trump says 11 killed in US strike on drug-carrying vessel from Venezuela
As far as I can tell from the murky info that has been released, this was an act of piracy by the US Navy. Which I find appalling. The Trump Administration is trying to push this as a legal action by declaring them (Venezuelan drug cartel(s)) terrorists, but even if you accept that pretense, they have presented no proof that the 11 ppl on board that boat were cartel members. As it stands, I don’t accept the pretense of calling drug runners terrorists just so you can justify using military force on them in international waters where they posed no imminent threat to anyone and weren’t even attempting to enter US waters - they were heading towards another country altogether.
I suppose, if worse came to worse, trump could agree with Ven. that it was all AI. I actually thought that when this story broke that it might be such a big deal that MAGAts themselves would use trumpstein to distract from it. I guess it’s a nothingburger.
He’s going to create terrorists, and then he will say, “See, I was right about these evil people!” Then, he’ll kill more and more.
It was an extrajudicial killing but I don’t think it qualifies as piracy under either 18 USC Chapter 81 or UNCLOS Article 101(a)(i) since it isn’t an act by a non-state-affiliated party but was rather an authorized act of the national military force of the offending nation (US Navy). That attack, without provocation, not in self-defense or defense of a third party, and with no other attempt made to divert, disable, or dissuade the boat arguably makes it an undeclared act of war, and potentially a war crime. Here is what the US Naval Institute has to say on the strike and general issue of using the Navy for this kind of ‘intervention’:
The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits the armed forces from engaging in law enforcement on U.S. soil. Congress has carved out exceptions for maritime counternarcotics support, which in practice has meant the military provides surveillance, logistics, and transport, while the Coast Guard conducts arrests.5 By ordering a strike against narcotics smugglers instead of a seizure, the administration stretched this framework into new territory.
Internationally, the question is even thornier. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea grants states authority to board and seize vessels engaged in piracy, the slave trade, or unauthorized broadcasting. Drug trafficking is addressed through separate conventions and bilateral treaties. None of these treaties authorizes the summary execution of traffickers at sea, even if they are designated as terrorists. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the strike is self-defense—that the United States could engage in a unilateral strike because narcotics trafficking poses a threat to U.S. national security and U.S. citizens. But the principle of self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter only allows the use of force against an imminent threat. It is hard to see how a drug-laden speedboat in international waters hundreds of miles from U.S. territory posed an imminent threat to the United States.
To be clear, the United States has engaged in the extrajudicial killing for two decades using the drone assassination program, generally within the sovereign borders of another nation and with a minimum of due process. The program was originally justified under the George W. Bush administration for “high value targets” in the Global War on Terror or “against persons who pose a continuing imminent threat to U.S. persons”, although the specific requirements to meet those definitions have been progressively relaxed until they basically mean whoever the kill chain authority has designated as a target. This includes four (4) US citizens killed by drone strikes with no due process, which is almost certainly a violation of constitutional rights. So, this isn’t wholly unprecedented but it is certainly an expansion of scope where unidentified persons in a foreign flag boat in international waters who pose no imminent threat to US persons or assets are summarily executed for the purported crime of smuggling drugs between two independent countries, neither of which requested US military support. The claim that they were members of transnational organized crime organization ‘Tren de Aragua’ was neither verified, nor (despite clams from JD Vance and other Trump regime officials) is it justifiable through AUMF as unlike Al Qaeda, Tren de Aragua has never declared war or intent to commit acts of terrorism against the United States. Despite the statement from Marco Rubio that the boat was filled with drugs and headed for the US, there is no evidence for either claim; the boat was not headed for or anywhere near the US coast, and drug boats are not usually filled with people taking up valuable space for drugs.
Of course, the reason this actually happened is because the Trump regime is trying to provoke confrontation with Venezuela and potentially to overthrow the Maduro regime. This kind of unilateral military action by the US is hardly unprecedented, even in the region (US invasions of Grenada in 1983 and of Panama in 1989) but while Nicolás Maduro is certainly corrupt and the election that brought him to power was condemned as illegitimate by the Organization of American States which approved a resolution declaring his presidency illegitimate and calling for new elections, nobody has asked the United States to intervene. Unlike those interventions, which were essentially political in nature, this is actually just a thinly veiled exercise in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to gain control over the natural resources of Venezuela, specifically petroleum, gold, and copper reserves.
More from the Council on Foreign Relations:
Stranger
More than the clear violation of due process in destroying a boat full of drug runners, are we even sure it was drug runners? Or that the boat even really existed?
I’d like an answer to: what prevented the US from stopping the boat, like it stops every other boat? Not a war crime, just plain old murder.
Any sense of morality whatsoever.
The fact that the boat was in international waters (not territorial waters or an ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’), legitimately registered to a foreign nation, and wasn’t an imminent threat to the US Navy vessels or another others would make boarding a ship just as illegitimate as blowing it up.
‘Murder’ is a crime committed by an individual(s). The act was arguably a war crime because it was done by a national military force under executive direction.
Stranger
The guy who pushed the button either obeyed an unlawful order, or “unlawful order” is meaningless.
This isn’t just about the “guy who pushed the button” acting on his own initiative with private means and the people in the boat; it is actually an attack on national sovereignty, an abridgment of the internationally recognized United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the ultimate objective of the Trump regime to intimidate and if necessary use force to control or seize the natural resources of Venezuela, which is really the first step in a much broader ambition that Trump has already explicitly hinted at by threatening to invade Greenland and Panama.
Stranger
The guy who ordered him to push it, and whoever ordered him. How many people between trump and the ultimate executioner would there be?
True, legally piracy is an act comminted by private individuals, not a government. War Crime it is.
Could be as few as 4. Trump orders Admiral Alvin Holsey (Commander of SOUTHCOM) who orders Rear Admiral Carlos A. Sardiello (Commander or Fourth Fleet) who orders the ship’s Captain, or the CO of whatever unit actually did the shooting, who orders someone to target and destroy the boat.
Probably a few extra layers there but enough for somebody to object to murdering a boat full of people just because.
Maybe it started out trump to Kegbreath. He’d probably be thrilled to be part of that.
If another country had done this to a boat filled with US citizens, we’d already be in a war.
Didn’t Captain Kirk have a big button on the arm of his throne, and he’d have Scotty route the trigger to it for whatever big action was outside that he needed to act upon? And everybody would sweat as they got closer and closer to doom. And he’d press it at just the right moment. That’s trump and this boat, only the right moment was onanistic in nature.
If Venezuela had something like a hope of achieving military parity with the U.S. you would be.
But as the ancient Athenians put it “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”