> Even if you believe the dope itself to be no great national security threat, that's just their payload today, maybe next time they'll smuggle in a nuke or whatever.
You're saying it's fine that they're killed for something they could "maybe" do in the future? Without even seeing any evidence that they're doing what they're accused of today? Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
>You're saying it's fine that they're killed for something they could "maybe" do in the future?
Smuggling of any sort is a weapon with disastrous consequences. We wouldn't let the cartels have nukes, why would we want them to have "smuggling"? Yes, I'm fine with this. That they promise not to use it for really bad stuff for now wouldn't make a difference (and they're not even making that promise).
>Without even seeing any evidence t
I'm not interested in being the internet jury for this, no.
>Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?
Gee. That's something I really want to wait until after they commit the offense before we do something about it. You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate strategy.
The boats they are attacking won’t have drugs, these are the slow fishing boats that are at most refueling the go-fast boats with the drugs. Killing these people is just murder and nothing else. We have been doing drug interdiction for years without killing everyone until the orange dictator came into power.
Source: I did a deployment in counter drug interdiction in the Navy.
Edit: if you really want to know how threatening these guys are, they usually spotted our aircraft and the first thing they did was ALWAYS to jettison any weapons they had immediately, then start throwing out the drugs. They knew they weren’t fighting a USN ship and that we weren’t guns to harm them if they were peaceful. I suspect they might fight back now, though.
> that are at most refueling the go-fast boats with the drugs.
Oh. Wow. That makes it ok then. As long as they can all play hot potato and the drug runners don't have it on their own persons when the missile hits, it was unjustifiable.
Most of the fishing boats we boarded that were suspected to be resupply boats were, in fact, regular old fishing boats. The 1 we found that was a resupply boat had only external signs of fishing, but internally had fuel bladders instead of fish and ice. We, of course, didn't murder those guys or the 4-5 go-fasts we caught: we captured them and turned them over to partner country navies for legal processing.
In other words, most of the boats our intelligence apparatus thought were possible supply boats were simply fishermen. We are definitely killing some innocent fishermen with these strikes, and even if we weren't it's not ethical or legal to murder a bunch of guys selling fuel to drug runners. By the way, all of the drug runners are basically indentured servants or slaves and their families are being held back home as collateral.
Keep thinking you're on the side of right, though, and when you realize the USA is the baddies on this one you will hopefully be horrified at the realization.
> We wouldn't let the cartels have nukes, why would we want them to have "smuggling"?
Because usually we only respond to behaviours and actions that actually exist in the real world. By this logic we should charge all shop lifters with treason because they're not promising they'll never steal state secrets.
> Gee...You've changed my mind with your top-notch debate strategy.
I'm not sure why you're choosing to take this tone but I would hope we could have any further discussion like adults.
You're saying it's fine that they're killed for something they could "maybe" do in the future? Without even seeing any evidence that they're doing what they're accused of today? Have there been instances in the past of drug smugglers moving into the nuclear warhead smuggling game?