“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 Navy said they didn’t want any more littoral combat ships because they sucked, but Congress spent a bunch more money building more of them due to district politics.
“Most U.S. drug traffickers are Americans, but the president is ordering extrajudicial maritime killings while ignoring the domestic demand that drives the market.”
“By the sources’ telling, SEAL Team Six had sailed to the North Korean coast in two mini-submarines under a communications blackout, which meant that they lacked the livestreamed intelligence they were used to having. Based on aerial surveillance beforehand, the military planners had concluded that this part of North Korea was supposed to be free of boat traffic at that hour of the night in the winter.
Some of the SEALs swam to shore while others stayed in the submarines. When a leader of the shore team saw flashlights coming from a boat and a man jumping into the water, he opened fire without any discussion. Then the shore team swam to dispose of the bodies—trying to sink them so that they couldn’t be found—and then they sent a distress signal to evacuate. There were no weapons or uniforms on the boat.
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The mission was carried out during the first Trump administration. The U.S. government wanted insight into North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his high-stakes nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump.”
““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.”