If they are not human, we do not have to follow the law
New book points out that the narco boat 'second strike' story is a familiar one. The US has always determined who is morally disqualified from the rules.

“Kill everybody” was what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reportedly instructed the Special Operations commander as alleged drug smugglers were being tracked off the Trinidad coast.

A missile strike set their boat ablaze. Two survivors were seen clinging to what was left of their vessel. A second U.S. strike finished them off. These extra-judicial killings on Sept. 2 were the first in the Trump administration’s campaign to incinerate “narco-terrorists.” Over the past two months, at least 80 people have been killed in more than 20 attacks on the demonstrably false grounds that the Venezuelan government is a major source of drugs flowing into the United States.

Because the supposed drug runners are participating in an “armed conflict” against the U.S., they are not entitled to due process or other protections — such as those afforded to shipwrecked individuals — under the laws of war, the administration contends. “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth charged on X.

Language serves more than a strictly legal justification. The term “narco-terrorist” is meant to dehumanize and desensitize. Their conduct — murder, terrorism, and poisoning Americans’ bodies — morally disqualifies them and, therefore, justifies extraordinary punishment. The possibility that harmless fishermen are blown to pieces must not weaken our leaders’ resolve to defend the nation.

The boat strikes may be illegal and appalling, but the Trump administration’s conduct follows a long historical pattern, where America’s enemies operate outside the acceptable boundaries of civilization, and Washington's heavy-handed response can be justified by notions of national security, economic interests, racial superiority, or basic human decency — or all four simultaneously.

In his stimulating book, “Chasing Bandits: America’s Long War on Terror,” Nichols College historian Michael E. Neagle reveals the constancy of terms “connoting criminality, incivility, and illegitimacy of both causes and means,” such as bandits, savages, guerrillas, and terrorists. “I maintain that these pejorative descriptions have had two distinct utilities: one, to rally popular and political support in the United States by intimating cultural distinctions that suggested or reinforced a sense of American superiority, and two, to justify incursions abroad that provided the United States with more influence in places of strategic interest,” Neagle says. (...)

Really! We gave them riches for being cut-throats & head-choppers and some of them still think it's the task.
Now we still need to babyfeed them.
We've always created BAD in the world.
 
Thanks to the media, people just don't get it.

 R_P wrote: 
So war is better than sanctions ?  Asking for a friend ...

Maybe try the YES button for a change

Catnip for sociopaths. ‘We Think the Price Is Worth It’

 R_P wrote:
We don't have Vincent's intuition.

Sum of heartbeats ruling us.

Power & money main engines.

US America has been the greatest warmonger on the planet over a century now.
The "rest of the world" have been subject to illegal invasions, bombardments, and regime-change wars.
Just in case you don't know yet.

"But the Russians!"

that's all ...