Donald Trump Playing Grand Theft Boat Murder Again!
We sure are attacking a lot of boats 1500 miles away from America!
The US military attacked and destroyed a second civilian boat from Venezuela, killing all three people aboard. Donald Trump announced the extrajudicial murders Monday on social media, dressing it up with claims that the (alleged) criminal act of smuggling drugs made it OK for the US military to attack the boat, because only sissy liberals care about little distinctions over who the military is allowed to kill. They’re bad people, or at least the president said they are, and never mind that you enforce the law by interdicting the boat and arresting the smugglers. Those are the old rules (and mere US law), but it’s much more popular to just murder them with drone-launched missiles.
Besides, the Sociopath-in-Chief dressed up his announcement (Bluesky screen capture) with a lot of language that blurred the line between law enforcement and military action, so that also makes it perfectly fine, and why are libs always standing up for drug dealers and murderers and rapists anyway?
They weren’t merely smugglers, they were “confirmed narcoterrorists,” and the drugs weren’t merely illegal narcotics, they’re a literal “DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS.” So clearly these weren’t civilian criminals subject to being arrested and tried in courts, they were magically converted into “terrorists,” and are therefore military enemies, you shut up with your soy-boy “laws,” or he’ll declare you an enemy and a threat to national security too.
Trump didn’t offer any evidence that the boat was carrying drugs or that the men’s identity had been “confirmed,” because he didn’t do that in the other attack that killed 11 people on a boat two weeks ago and why would he? He’s the president and you don’t question him.
Asked by reporters later in the day what proof there was that the boat was carrying drugs, Trump said duh, of course it was drugs, because can’t you see what’s not visible at all in the drone video? “We have proof. All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean — big bags of cocaine and and fentanyl all over the place.” We can only assume they were also prominently marked with “COCAINE” and “FENTANYL” in big stenciled letters so the drug dealers wouldn’t mix them up.
Trump didn’t bother claiming this time that the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, which he said about the first set of murders, but maybe he will later if he decides that matters. Besides, as Trump pointed out Sunday, even before this latest attack, it’s OK to do some illegal drone strikes as long as you have a good comeback, like claiming that drugs killed 300 million Americans last year, nearly the nation’s entire population. The few remaining survivors among us miss them terribly.
Also, additional details about that first attack undercut the administration’s claims that the boat it targeted was an “imminent threat” to America, which was the reason Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed as justification for attacking it with military weapons. The boat was already turning around and heading back to port absolutely nowhere near America when it was hit and left dead in the water, according to officials briefed on the attack. What’s more, the Intercept reported last week that several people on the boat were still alive after the initial strike that stopped it, so additional drone strikes were ordered, sinking the boat and killing them.
Rubio made clear from early on that the US could have simply stopped the first boat and arrested all on board, in accordance with US and international law, but that wasn’t showy enough, so Trump ordered 11 murders. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again,” he boasted.
Military lawyers and experts, who are never any fun, keep pointing out that the military is prohibited by law from attacking civilians, which is what criminals are, seeing as how they are not actually uniformed members of the armed forces of a country we’re at war with.
“I would be interested if they could come up for any legal basis for what they did,” said Rear Admiral James E. McPherson, who served as the top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2004 to 2006 and later held prominent civilian military roles in the Trump administration. “If, in fact, you can fashion a legal argument that says these people were getting ready to attack the U.S. through the introduction of cocaine or whatever, if they turned back, then that threat has gone away.”
Monday, Rubio explained that it’s perfectly OK to attack a boat that has turned back to port, because Trump wanted to, telling reporters, “What needs to start happening is some of these boats need to get blown up. […] We can’t live in a world where all of a sudden they do a U-turn and so we can’t touch them anymore.” Seriously, what fun is that?
It doesn’t appear that Rubio has addressed the matter of going back to kill survivors if the first attack leaves any. Even in wartime, against enemy troops, that’s a war crime.
But again, such fine distinctions might get in the way of killing bad guys, which is all that matters. Why would we go to the trouble of sending a ship to rescue evil narcoterrorists, who are by definition evil people, and then waste money giving them medical care and a trial, and then paying to imprison them? Blowing them up is just easier, whatever our “laws” might say.
In addition to the most recent deadly attack, the US Navy also boarded a Venezuelan fishing boat on Friday and held its nine crew members for eight hours before not finding any drugs among the tuna they’d caught. In an extraordinary bit of phrasing, the New York Times says, “The suspicions the vessel was carrying drugs apparently proved unfounded, so the Navy and the Coast Guard let the people go without killing anyone.”
But do we get any thanks for being so nice? We could just as well have blown it out of the water, said it was carrying drugs, and that would have been that. Trump joked about that in the Oval Office yesterday, claiming that the US has been doing such a great job of blowing up civilian boats that not only has drug smuggling been eliminated, so has other civilian shipping.
“We’re seeing that there are no ships in the ocean anymore,” Trump claimed, which seems a bit unlikely. “I wonder why? Meaning, no drugs are coming across. Probably stopping some fishermen too. To be honest, if I were a fisherman, I wouldn’t want to go fishing either. ‘Maybe they think I have drugs downstairs.’”
Trump also promised to start attacking drug shipments on land as well, and if some buses full of civilians get hit, that’s their problem, now isn’t it?
[AP / Intercept / New Republic / NYT]
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There's more cocaine aboard the yachts docked at private clubs in Florida. Maybe New Zealand should bomb them, just for being so close.
I see he's still hiding his right hand.