Illegal Attacks on Boats

Illegal Attacks on Boats

The Caribbean is not a battlefield

by Louisiana Libertarian Party

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The United States government has murdered more than 80 people in its recent military campaign against those it claims were transporting drugs. These killings are not battlefield engagements. These strikes are preemptive executions carried out without evidence, without due process, and without any meaningful threat to the American people.

In one of these attacks, multiple credible sources report the U.S. military killed shipwrecked survivors who had already been rendered defenseless. After the initial missile strike destroyed their boat, wounded men were seen clinging to debris. A second strike was launched, killing the survivors.

There is no moral framework under which this is anything but murder.

International humanitarian law is explicit: it is illegal to attack noncombatants, the wounded, the shipwrecked, or anyone rendered defenseless who poses no threat. The U.S. has codified these same rules in its own military law. Killing survivors has no justification under "self-defense."

Importantly, this is not a battlefield. A small vessel allegedly carrying drugs is not a military threat to a U.S. carrier strike group. It is a group of drug suspects, nothing more.

According to extensive reporting by multiple National outlets, the follow-up strike was carried out after a verbal directive "to kill everybody," reported to have come from "Secretary of War," Pete Hegseth.

The White House at the time defended the alleged directive as being well within their "authority and the law."

However, after public outrage, the administration attempted to walk this back, claiming Hegseth never gave such an order- despite having previously defended it. 

Hegseth himself has tried to downplay the killings, saying he "did not see" the survivors when calling for a lethal follow-up strike, while Pentagon spokespeople debate technical definitions of "double-tap."

None of this changes the facts: Killing wounded shipwrecked survivors who are not an active threat is murder.

When lawmakers raised concerns about the legality of these strikes, President Trump responded not with transparency or accountability, but with threats. He suggested that the death penalty would be appropriate for members of Congress who oppose such illegal orders. He circulated rhetoric implying that Democratic lawmakers opposing unlawful military actions should be hanged to death. Meanwhile, Hegseth’s own response to the killings was not remorse but memes a mockery.

This shows that, under the "Department of War," we have a military culture that enjoys killing and rejects accountability.

The administration claims these killings save lives by stopping cocaine. Yet during this time, President Trump pardoned a man convicted of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

This is not about drugs.

This is about unchecked governmental power.

By inventing the term "narco-terrorists," the White House claims the right to kill anyone they accuse without trial, without evidence, and without accountability.

Libertarians want to scale back the state, not grant it the right to murder.

The Libertarian stance is clear: End the war on drugs, don’t escalate it into a literal war.

The United States cannot bomb its way out of a drug problem. It cannot murder its way to sobriety. And no government has the moral authority to execute people it merely accuses of wrongdoing.

Military strikes against civilians were wrong under Bush, wrong under Obama, wrong under Biden, and wrong under Trump – no matter the President, no matter the Party, the military is there for our defense, not to act as an aggressively murderous world police force.

The answer to illegal orders is to obey the law, not the orders.

The solution to drugs is freedom, not war. //

link to original post: https://x.com/LouisianaLp/status/1996314948192944285?s=20

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