Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Kills by Claiming Targeting Drugs, Not People

I don't see how killing a lot of fishermen and destroying their families alleviates this pain.

There might have been drugs on the boats, but maybe not. No one bothered to check first.

The fishermen might have been part-time drug smugglers, maybe not. How do we know? What investigation was done?

And if we really believe that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

then taking away people's lives without due process is murder. Cold blooded, premeditated murder. That's a worse crime than selling someone a drug that might kill them.

Friend, don't let your pain blind you to causing more pain. Ethics is hard.

Just to be clear-- we're talking about a hypothetical family member of a potential future victim of drug overdose who was unwittingly saved based on fully trusting the federal government's claim that their extra-judicial killing stopped the international trade of illicit drugs as opposed to killing innocent fishermen.

Did I correctly label all the global mutable state in your example?

I get and agree with your non-sequitur that there's a clear difference between drug mules and fishermen, I just don't see the relevance of that to the danger of leveraging these post-9/11 counterterrorism laws (and secret interpretations of them) to carry out extra-judicial killings.

Edit: to be extra clear-- the whole point of meaningful democratic oversight in this case is to be able to meaningfully care, measure and review the difference between drug mules and fishermen. The entire modern history of secret interpretations of counterterrorism laws tells us that without this basic oversight, the government will always claim they only target the murderers. Worse, they'll use the veil of national security to hide the fact that innocent victims are jailed, tortured, and killed through the same counterterrorism programs.

So does alcohol. (And a whole bunch of other domestically-produced stuff.)

How much effort is being put into the demand-side of the equation?

They also gloss over the fact that alcohol does the same. But I don't think it's bizarre to allow people to make their own decisions.

When alcohol was criminalized, many people would go blind from impurities in their own homebrews. Legalization and regulation are good things to prevent some of the unintended consequences, like deaths from adulteration with fentanyl, hotspots, and so on.

The pragmatic approach is that we're spending far too much money blowing up small boats which could be better invested in actually fixing our healthcare system and other domestic issues, with decent odds of going to war and spending even more money because of it. The empathetic side is that these are just fishermen that aren't even involved in this whole shitshow getting killed for political points by a bloodthirsty and stupid admin.

I don't mean to be "that guy", but how do we even know the sailors on these boats aren't just some fishermen working for the cartels because they have a guy at his shack with a gun on his mother and siblings or kids? Or, even worse, what if they aren't working for cartels at all? Just went out to try to fish.

I'm not sure what our endgame is here, but just eyeballing this from the outside it looks like we're doing surgery with chainsaws instead of scalpels.

And all that assumes that our government is actually trying to help. Our end goal could be something else entirely? It's all just mystifying right now? I'm not sure anyone could give a coherent explanation of the why's, and I'm just about certain that no one could give a rational explanation of the how.

It looks like a deep sea panga boat used for fishing. I’m not a sailor so it’s not obvious to me why the destroyed boat pictured is a …well… for one thing only.

Here’s a video of YouTuber ItchyBoots taking a boat around the Darien Gap. [1] What does this look like? (start from “Entrada” sign on the beach).

If the destroyed boat is different, it’s because it has three outboard motors and not just one. Still has the same open design.

I mean, it’s not a “cigar boat” [2].

Adding two more outboards seems same to me as my neighbor who drives a Dodge 3500.

[1]: Starts at 16:00 https://youtu.be/2wjLdLbpzxY

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK_7pNhbAA4

Can you explain this? I agree they are not fishing boats but I don't understand how anything beyond that is obvious. Is smuggling the only possible use for that boat? Are drugs the only thing that can be smuggled?

Normally, suspected drug smugglers should be interdicted, boarded, and inspected. The Coast Guard and U.S. Navy train for this. It's standard operating procedure.

It's not normal to destroy boats which don't pose any immediate threat. It would be acceptable to fire on a boat which refuses to permit boarding and inspection, assuming the interdiction itself is legal under maritime law.

Unless there is an imminent threat, you've got to give people a course of action which they can take to avoid their vessel being fired upon: turn back, change course, submit to boarding and inspection, etc.

Doesn't seem like this survivor has much money.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/22/americas/caribbean-strike-sur...