Venezuela 2025

[Bootstrap]

Is anybody actually claiming they're "fishing boats" anymore?

What does this have to do w the price of beans? They are carrying drugs...Iraq had WMD.

I find this a reasonable parallel. It felt a little lonely to be suspicious of that war, the support was bipartisan and at high pitch.

You may remember that I was also suspicious of that war. Though Colin Powell did convince me for a few weeks.

[ken_sylvania]

Apparently, blowing up drug smugglers is fair and right, but sentencing them to 45 years in prison is "treating them harshly and unfairly."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-to-p ... _permalink

OK, whatever...

[R7ehr]

It really shows the fallacy of having rules in war, when you are free to blast a speedboat out of the water and kill everyone on it that is not attacking anyone or is armed (let’s presume since that wouldn’t matter either way), and yet if you follow up and kill the survivors, it suddenly and somehow is greatly immoral and illegal.

It also shows that humans know deep down that killing people is wrong. But we want to kill people anyway, so we carve out allowable times to do so. Which in this case means that you must kill them with the first missile. What a tangled web we weave.

[Szdfan]

It really shows the fallacy of having rules in war, when you are free to blast a speedboat out of the water and kill everyone on it that is not attacking anyone or is armed (let’s presume since that wouldn’t matter either way), and yet if you follow up and kill the survivors, it suddenly and somehow is greatly immoral and illegal.

It also shows that humans know deep down that killing people is wrong. But we want to kill people anyway, so we carve out allowable times to do so. Which in this case means that you must kill them with the first missile. What a tangled web we weave.

Fair point. The paradox of morality and war is real and the line between “legal” and “illegal” killing is murky.

A couple of nuances to consider —

1) The air strikes against Venezuelan speed boats may actually not be legal. The US is not at war with Venezuela. These speed boats are civilian, not military targets. Even though the administration has declared some of the cartels “terrorist groups,” we actually don’t know whether the targets were part of these cartels. Without any kind of due process or oversight, this terrorist designation is arbitrary. The president shouldn’t just be able to declare someone a “terrorist” and start killing arbitrarily. Hopefully the proposed Armed Services Committee Investigation will provide answers.

The administration is acting boldly, but the legality of this is murky. There need to be investigations both by Congress and international groups. By systematically firing the JAG corps, the Trump administration removed the legal guardrails to prevent this from happening.

2) While the legality of the entire operation is murky, the killing of “incapacitated” participants is not. Under the Geneva Convention, it’s clearly a war crime. The US military had a legal obligation to rescue them and detain them as prisoners of war (if in fact we are war with the cartels, which is also murky.)

I completely agree that the “rules of war” are often murky, ironic and frustrating. But I’d rather live in a world where there are at least some constraints to military action, than none at all. Removing these imperfect guardrails means more extrajudicial killings with no accountability at all.

[temporal1]

It really shows the fallacy of having rules in war, when you are free to blast a speedboat out of the water and kill everyone on it that is not attacking anyone or is armed (let’s presume since that wouldn’t matter either way), and yet if you follow up and kill the survivors, it suddenly and somehow is greatly immoral and illegal.

It also shows that humans know deep down that killing people is wrong.
But we want to kill people anyway, so we carve out allowable times to do so.
Which in this case means that you must kill them with the first missile.

What a tangled web we weave.

In my view, it boils down to the failure of human reasoning, it’s flatly not sufficient.
Even in ancient times and in the Bible, there were warnings about lawyers and human law. Human reasoning is very hard to resist!
Even remembering the ultimate unvarnished warning about filthy rags.

Woe unto doctors and lawyers ..
https://www.answers.com/religion-and-sp ... _the_bible

[Soloist]

Before we forget, remember the time the US bombed a wedding, killed a pastor in a car, by training already violate Geneva conventions on a regular basis, decided stateless actors were not enemy but terrorists and not subject to any legal treatment of prisoners. All of this happened before Trump was a figure.

These are the actions of a nation accountable to no one.

Its little surprise when our military willingly commits war crimes rather then go to prison for life or some other consequence when already by practice, we break those laws.

[JohnH]

It really shows the fallacy of having rules in war, when you are free to blast a speedboat out of the water and kill everyone on it that is not attacking anyone or is armed (let’s presume since that wouldn’t matter either way), and yet if you follow up and kill the survivors, it suddenly and somehow is greatly immoral and illegal.

It also shows that humans know deep down that killing people is wrong. But we want to kill people anyway, so we carve out allowable times to do so. Which in this case means that you must kill them with the first missile. What a tangled web we weave.

Guess that if someone wants to avoid "war crimes" then they should make sure to blow up a boat with a really big bomb so that there is no chance of any survivors.

In reality, what people are claiming is a "war crime" is not, and the specific conduct alleged has been a part of several major U.S. conflicts (specifically, World War II, where the exact same scenario happened multiple times). I suspect the objection to this is largely political, and has nothing to do with a sincere conviction against war and killing.

Before we forget, remember the time the US bombed a wedding, killed a pastor in a car, by training already violate Geneva conventions on a regular basis, decided stateless actors were not enemy but terrorists and not subject to any legal treatment of prisoners. All of this happened before Trump was a figure.

These are the actions of a nation accountable to no one.

Its little surprise when our military willingly commits war crimes rather then go to prison for life or some other consequence when already by practice, we break those laws.

Well, it's OK if someone from my preferred political party does bad things.

It's a very very bad thing though and must be harshly punished if someone from my opposition does bad things.

Right?

[JohnH]

1) The air strikes against Venezuelan speed boats may actually not be legal. The US is not at war with Venezuela. These speed boats are civilian, not military targets.

Conveniently, the U.S. hasn't been "at war" in a very long time (certainly not in my lifetime). That neatly sidesteps much of the argument about "war crimes".

Even though the administration has declared some of the cartels “terrorist groups,” we actually don’t know whether the targets were part of these cartels. Without any kind of due process or oversight, this terrorist designation is arbitrary. The president shouldn’t just be able to declare someone a “terrorist” and start killing arbitrarily. Hopefully the proposed Armed Services Committee Investigation will provide answers.

Well, the President can, and that's been the law on the books since I was a teenager. The President can indeed designate groups terrorist groups, and such a designee is neither a civilian target nor a military target.

The administration is acting boldly, but the legality of this is murky. There need to be investigations both by Congress and international groups. By systematically firing the JAG corps, the Trump administration removed the legal guardrails to prevent this from happening.

There's nothing "murky" about it. This has been how the U.S. government has operated for over 20 years, including prior administration (except maybe Biden's. I don't know anything about him randomly drone-striking "terrorists".)

2) While the legality of the entire operation is murky, the killing of “incapacitated” participants is not. Under the Geneva Convention, it’s clearly a war crime. The US military had a legal obligation to rescue them and detain them as prisoners of war (if in fact we are war with the cartels, which is also murky.)

Ah, but it's not a war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply. They are not prisoners of war either. Remember how they're "terrorists"?

I completely agree that the “rules of war” are often murky, ironic and frustrating. But I’d rather live in a world where there are at least some constraints to military action, than none at all. Removing these imperfect guardrails means more extrajudicial killings with no accountability at all.

It should be rather obvious that the world's superpowers, like the U.S., the Soviet Union, Russia, China, and so on, are not bound by any kind of "rules of war". They should be viewed more as treaties between superpowers for how they interact with one another.

Since the various terrorist groups don't exactly engage in diplomatic relations or become signatories to various treaties, they aren't part of any sort of "Geneva Convention", and there is also no sort of treaty that sets the rules for how various nations interact with terrorist groups.

Lest I sound like I am overly critical of how the world's superpowers deal with terrorists, I will acknowledge that it's a rather tricky thing to deal with terrorist groups.

[temporal1]

.. Lest I sound like I am overly critical of how the world's superpowers deal with terrorists, I will acknowledge that it's a rather tricky thing to deal with terrorist groups.

yes.

[Soloist]

Guess that if someone wants to avoid "war crimes" then they should make sure to blow up a boat with a really big bomb so that there is no chance of any survivors.

In reality, what people are claiming is a "war crime" is not, and the specific conduct alleged has been a part of several major U.S. conflicts (specifically, World War II, where the exact same scenario happened multiple times). I suspect the objection to this is largely political, and has nothing to do with a sincere conviction against war and killing.

When during World War II did we kill civilians in speedboats?
We did do quite a lot that was unethical, but I don’t recall us doing that.

Well, it's OK if someone from my preferred political party does bad things.

It's a very very bad thing though and must be harshly punished if someone from my opposition does bad things.

Right?

You should know me better than that I don’t take sides. When Bush did it, when Clinton did it, when Obama did it, when Trump did it, none of these people were doing things that I support.
Not that I support war in general, what I do support though is holding someone to what they say they do.
if we say we’re ethical and the moral authority or that we don’t do unethical things that we (USA) are the good guys… then I expect people to actually do that. When they don’t, I’m going to call it out.
I’ve said it before the US has a lot of media crying over other countries for using cluster munitions and antipersonnel Landlines.(autocorrupt was funny so I left it) They’re kind of quiet about it right now because of Ukraine using those things, but the US never signed any of those treaties and we used them and still use them.
I’m against military action in general… but I’m particularly against military action that doesn’t even follow the law of the land doing it.
There are legal routes for him to do this, the president, and historically, we have done that. I’m sure if you look, you can find examples of where we’ve intercepted these high-speed boats or even captured the Tender on the other end that they dock to.
If we really cared about this, we’d take the tender down. The boats are a small piece and if we really were insistent on taking them out, we have laws governing how that’s supposed to happen and it’s the Coast Guard’s job. You could potentially argue that the Navy has some parameters to do it, but they certainly don’t have parameters to sink a ship for no threat against their ship. Without a warning, firing a warning shot, firing a damaging shot and finally sinking. And even then they would pick up the survivors, interrogate them and lock them in the brig until they could be turned over to the authorities.
Financial considerations for housing prisoners have a way to make things very, very ugly. If we don’t see the point in housing these drug smugglers for a proper trial.