Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“At the beginning of the war, the Taliban were almost completely routed, and the U.S. military could have left from a position of strength. The new Afghan republic announced that it had an offer from the Taliban to surrender in exchange for amnesty and a chance to participate in politics. But the Bush administration turned down that offer, settling for nothing less than total, unconditional victory.”
Trump appears to be basing his decision to send the military to police Portland on what he sees on TV. The governor of Oregon tried to convince him that Portland was not a warzone, but Trump was not convinced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
Ukraine’s F-16s are helping it shoot down missiles that ground-based defenses and Ukraine’s Soviet aircraft have trouble with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ-IA0GLvqY
Russian jets violated NATO airspace in Estonia with minimal consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV2OTIBtjSw
“Although Trump frames his unprecedented use of the U.S. military to summarily execute drug suspects as “self-defense,” it plainly does not fit that description. By his own account, he has unilaterally decided to impose the death penalty on alleged drug traffickers for the sake of deterrence. That policy represents a stark departure from both military norms and criminal justice principles.
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The Trump administration “has not even seriously tried to present a legal argument to justify the premeditated killing of the people aboard these two vessels,” former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told The New York Times. “The U.S. president does not have a license to kill suspected drug smugglers on that basis alone.”
Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, who served as the Navy’s top judge advocate general from 2000 to 2002, concurred. “Trump is normalizing what I consider to be an unlawful strike,” he said.
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Trump does not claim the men whose deaths he ordered were engaged in literal attacks on the United States. The justification in both cases was that the targets were “transporting illegal narcotics,” which Trump dubiously equates with violent aggression.”
https://reason.com/2025/09/16/another-military-strike-on-a-speedboat-confirms-trumps-policy-of-murdering-suspected-drug-smugglers/
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges. It is part of the steps the Trump administration has taken to use the military in broader ways than previously seen, particularly in its immigration crackdown, including sending the National Guard into American cities and deploying active duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“These military officers would serve under the command and control of the Attorney General and would execute administrative determinations at the direction of the Attorney General,” according to the letter signed by 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It added that “these actions are inherently law enforcement actions that may not be performed by members of the armed forces.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/senate-democrats-raise-concerns-over-171333714.html
China is modernizing their military, including their nuclear weapons. Their military is getting very high tech very quickly. China is no longer just copying other people’s technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRts6IVMelA
“Using military personnel for domestic law enforcement is dangerous and fraught, and any political leader who does it should be held strictly accountable for the consequences. Given the absence of any real need for militarized law enforcement in Chicago, it would be a grave abuse of power for the president to send any troops there on a law-enforcement pretext — as it was when he mobilized the National Guard for law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But for more than one reason, that mobilization in D.C. is easier to defend constitutionally than sending the Texas National Guard to Chicago would be. Justifiably or not, constitutional law treats all of D.C. as an exception to the McCulloch principle: The people of D.C. are, as a general matter, subject to a lawmaking authority — Congress — that they play no part in electing. (That’s why some D.C. license plates bear the protest slogan, “Taxation Without Representation.”) But regardless of whether that exception is justified in D.C., it has absolutely no application in Illinois. Like Nebraskans and Pennsylvanians and Kansans, Illinoisians are constitutionally entitled to be constituents of whatever body governs them.
Any military force is likely to behave with less restraint toward a population to which its leaders are not responsible than toward a population to which its leaders must answer democratically. If the Texas National Guard behaves poorly in Chicago, the locals have no electoral mechanism for holding Texas authorities to account. The governor of Texas never appears on any ballot in Illinois. He has nothing to fear, politically, from the people his National Guard will police. Surely a militarization at the hands of a non-responsible power is no less tyrannical, and no more constitutional, than a tax imposed by one.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/09/chicago-protest-trump-national-guard-dangerous-00552873
The hitting of refineries in Russia is creating a gas shortage that may impact civilians. This could eventually weaken Russians’ support for the invasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvha2sVzAFE
“Vice President J.D. Vance was almost incredulous when a reporter asked him what “legal authority” the Trump administration used to blow up an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela with a drone on Tuesday. “There are people who are bringing—literal terrorists—who are bringing deadly drugs into our country,” Vance said.
Why are they “literal terrorists”? Because the administration said so. President Donald Trump declared just after taking office that he would be designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations. One of them was Tren de Aragua, the organization accused of sending out the drug boat. (The administration tends to play fast and loose with labeling things Tren de Aragua; for all its criminal activities, the gang is not known to smuggle cocaine.) After the drone strike, multiple cabinet officials made sure to use the phrase “narco-terrorist organization.”
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A terrorist can be anyone the White House declares: an American journalist, a suspected drug smuggler, or another government. The only requirement seems to be that the terrorist is located outside of U.S. soil.
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Deploying uniformed troops against street crime, flying (unarmed) Predator drones over protesters, blowing up suspected smugglers instead of arresting them—these images are breaking down the political distinction between the “battlefield” and the “homefront.” Last week, U.S. Border Patrol agents were photographed training with mortars during live-fire exercises in Alaska. Since when do American police need artillery?”
https://reason.com/2025/09/04/trumps-drug-boat-drone-strike-shows-how-terrorism-makes-everyone-killable/