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U.S. Military Strikes Drug Vessel from Venezuela, Killing 11
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- clipsy 1y agoAlleged drug vessel.
- drweevil 1y agoIndeed. Claimed to be Tren de Aragua. It would be nice if US media actually checked into the existence of that gang, MS13, and any other such bogeymen before taking this (or any) administration's word on anything. At least the Journal did quote Ambassador Feeley on how it used to be done.
- hedora 1y agoThe ambassador’s quotes are pretty damning: The boats they stop always surrender immediately, and sometimes are not cartel boats.
- TrnsltLife 1y ago[flagged]
- seattle_spring 1y agoMaybe there was "MS 13" labeled on the side in Times New Roman.
- jleyank 1y agoGiven that drug cartels aren't noted for kindness, I would think this raises the risk level for any gringo anywhere in Central or South America. Can't see them targeting the military, but everybody else better look over their shoulder. And if (when?) it escalates... Tom Clancy wrote this story back then, and (spoiler alert) the hero is the hero because he calls it off.
- cagenut 1y agowag that dog
- rayiner 1y agoGangs in Latin America strike me as similar to Islamists in Muslim countries. They are huge threats to the state’s monopoly on violence, and the best solution seems to be treating them as military targets. In Bangladesh there was a terrorist attack in 2016 in a nicer part of Dhaka popular with expatriates: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50570243 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50570243. I was very worried the country would descend into the situation you see in Pakistan where the state has a questionable level of control over the country. But the military mounted an extreme response against the Islamists, killing hundreds of Islamists. So far, there hasn’t been any significant terrorist attacks in the country since. This may not be a viable strategy in places like Afghanistan, where you have a radicalized population with a deep well of potential combatants. But it seems to be a viable strategy somewhere that there’s a finite supply of potential combatants who are willing to die for the cause.
- baybal2 1y ago[dead]
- 29athrowaway 1y ago"You must not fight too often with one enemy or you will teach him all your art of war." - Napoleon
- Ancapistani 1y agoI’m 99% sure that was Sun Tzu…
- edaemon 1y agoIt was Napoleon, but he was paraphrasing Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hedora 1y agoThe old policy was to just pull the boats over and search them. I wonder if there are any practical law enforcement benefits with the new “kill first, ask questions later” policy. The article doesn’t say much about this. Like were US Coast Guard getting injured in raids, or overwhelmed by the time it took to search the boats? How many suspected boats were innocent? How many that were turned loose showed up full of coke later?
- _mlbt 1y ago[flagged]
- t-writescode 1y agoIt just kills the mules and various low-level people or lackeys. Could also kill some of the family-people who are under the local feudal lord (drug cartel leadership)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tim333 1y agoTrump and Rubio don't seem particularly inclined to only go for the low level lackeys. "The president is very clear that he’s going to use the full power of America, the whole might of the United States, to take on and eradicate these drug cartels" and "TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder..." etc.
- esseph 1y agoNot really. None of the people in that boat were meaningful. If they were, they wouldn't have been on the boat. This is like going outside and swatting a fly. Congrats, there are a lot more out there and how much money got spent on that strike? May not scale well.
- 1y ago
- pinewurst 1y agohttps://archive.ph/72sLY https://archive.ph/72sLY
- neilv 1y agoWho added the peppy dramatic musical score, to the video of a boat being destroyed, and people killed? WSJ?
- shawn_w 1y agoProbably whichever PR flack in the Trump administration that released it. Making it look like something out of a movie is right up their alley.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- catlikesshrimp 1y agoSomeone who didn't read the briefing: “Everything is done to preserve life,” Feeley said. “What we don’t do is just shoot up boats like Netflix likes to pretend. We can shoot in self-defense, but we rarely do that because most narcos just give up.”
- npv789 1y agooil is the primary target
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wonderwonder 1y agoInteresting, the people on the boat supposedly belonged to the "Cartel de los Soles" and right after the strike, the Dominican Republic declared that cartel a terrorist organization. The cartel appears to be affiliated with the government of Venezuela. Definitely one way to squeeze Maduro
- rekrsiv 1y agoThis a supply and demand problem, supply will continue until Americans stop needing drugs. Maybe stop creating situations where people need the drugs in the first place?
- immibis 1y agoor make them legal, then they'll be optimized for shareholder profits, and become boring as fuck, and nobody will want them any more than people want pumpkin spice lattes
- tastyface 1y agoWhy is this random news article unflagged, while this significantly more active and tech-relevant article flagged? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45106903 Was this an intentional moderation decision? Most things with ICE in the title seem to remain flagged. Are the mods afraid? Or is this policy actually political?
- immibis 1y agoPosts about Israel or Israeli things are never not flagged. Moderators have the power to intervene incorrectly flagged articles, but they never do when Israel's involved. To even the score, I'm flagging this post. We can have all politics or no politics. Having only politics that are liked by the flag-bot network is a bad compromise.