While a pert of me is all for using any and all means available to end the scourge of drug trafficking, I feel pretty confident that simply blowing up a boat with alleged drugs on it using the military (possibly in Venezuelan waters) is a stupid idea. Especially bragging about ot by publicly airing the video. If a president was going to engage in this kind of thing, at least have the brains to do it secretly. Drug shipment boats that mysteriously disappear will be a much more effective deterrent than this public spectacle.
Personally, I'm all for blowing the lot of them up. I'm also a fan of doing so legally.
4 comments:
I think he is making it public so as to scare the bad guys.
I have no doubt that is a motivation. I'm just not sure that randomly blowing up boats with no due process is the best plan. As I noted in the post, if drug boats started to mysteriously disappear without publicity and fanfare, that seems like a very effective strategy with plausible deniability.
What due process is required to destroy a boat employed in illegal activity? I think a very public action which suggests nothing will stop good from destroying evil is just the right message to send. You've another post which speaks of the majority remaining silent. If the majority means law-abiding people, then a no-tolerance attitude is essential. Blowing up drug runners is a manifestation of this.
I would also suggest that it's most likely they knew exactly who these people were and what they were doing at the time. They were in the act of committing a crime. Taking them out like this, as Trump did Soleimani and the Iranian nuke facilities, lets the bad guys know they've put their own lives on the line when they indulge in criminality. We see the same concept in the Washington DC clean up and the deportation of illegals. Given Trump has less than 3.5 years to get things done, it's good he's trying to do as much as he possibly can given the very real possibility that he will be succeeded by those who won't be so bold in the face of criminality. And it's about time.
Good question. Let's start with actual proof that the boat was engaged in illegal activity. Or that the intent of the illegal activity was aimed at the US. I'm guessing that you're not an expert on international law/law of the sea, but how is this significantly different from the PLAN randomly destroying ships of other nations in the South China Sea?
I disagree that the publicity of this action was necessary, and have made that argument more than once in this post.
"More than likely" seems like a flimsy justification for this sort of destruction. Why not attempt to stop them first? We certainly have the naval power in place to board a boat of this size and display it's contents for all the world to see, do we not? Are not naval Spec Ops personnel trained for that exact mission? I'm not sure how the silence thing plays into this at all.
I'm all for cleaning up things and interrupting the flow of drugs. I'm struggling with the notion of simply blowing an unidentified boat out of the water just because we can.
Look, if Trump wants to declare war on Nicaragua and go that route, more power to him, but this doesn't seem much different from a Mexican drug lord whacking those who don't do his bidding. There just aren't bodies hanging from bridges or in barrels of acid.
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