“Somewhere off the coast of Venezuela, a speedboat with 11 people on board is blown to smithereens. Vice President J.D. Vance announces that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the vice president responded that he “didn’t give a shit.”
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But over 20,000 people are murdered in the U.S. each year, and yet somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation for the accused and jury trial.
Why? Because sometimes the accused is actually not guilty.
As passions subside, a civilized people should ask: To be clear, the people bombed to smithereens were guilty, right?
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The administration has maintained that the people blown to smithereens were members of Tren de Aragua and therefore narcoterrorists.
Certainly, then, if we know they belong to a particular gang, then someone must surely have known their names before they were blown to smithereens?
At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labelled as terrorists. U.S. law defines a terrorist as someone who uses “premeditated, politically motivated violence…against non-combatants.” Since the U.S. policy is now to blow people to smithereens if they are suspected of being in a terrorist gang, then maybe someone could take the time to explain the evidence of their terrorism?
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Few independent legal scholars argue the strikes are legal. Even John Yoo—a former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, who infamously authored the Bush administration’s legal justification for “enhanced interrogation techniques”—has criticized the Trump administration’s justification for the strikes, saying: “There has to be a line between crime and war. We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.””
The United States military is making extrajudicial illegal killings of potential drug traffickers, apparently killing a boat of Colombians this time. The U.S. is threatening a regime change war with Venezuela.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Monday for the Israeli strikes on Doha that killed a Qatari service member and violated Qatari sovereignty.
In a call organized by President Trump, Netanyahu also said such a strike would not happen again.”
“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.”
“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?”
““JD “I don’t give a shit” Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military.” Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X on Saturday night. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??”
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They are looking for answers as to why the administration elected to fire on the cartel, rather than rounding them up, and some are wary the strike could expand the president’s authority to call upon his war powers. There have also been questions about details of the attack and desire for proof that the boat itself was actually what the administration says it was.
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said of Vance’s Saturday post.”
Former Iranian diplomat says Iran was not deeply enriching before Trump unilaterally left the Iran nuclear deal. They enriched to 60% recently as a bargaining chip with Trump.
Also says their nuclear program was damaged, but they can rebuild.