Postscript: Double Strike on Trinidad Bound Boat

Responding to reader comments to my earlier post.

A few remarks in response to reader comments to my post earlier this evening (Bizarre Double Strike On Trinidad Bound Boat). Before I proceed: thank you for reading, and thanks for your comments.

1). The type of boat is a long peñero —a fairly shallow draft boat designed for fishing and transporting goods and people in coastal waters, not for long, blue water voyages. That this particular boat (with four outboard motors) is outfitted for speed is evidence that it could be used for drug running among neighboring Caribbean islands, but such a boat is definitely not designed for traversing 2,200 miles of sea between Tobago and southern Florida.

2). The boat was bound for Trinidad and Tobago, not the United States.

3). I am in favor of protecting U.S. borders and coastal waters from all criminals, brigands, pirates, and drug smugglers. However, the Dragon’s Mouth Channel between Venezuela and Trinidad is not part of U.S. coastal waters.

4). Since George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, I have been in the habit of questioning the military actions of all U.S. administrations. I am not going to break this habit now just because I have, on the whole, been a Trump supporter.

5). Drug smuggling is the crime of delivering intoxicating substances to a jurisdiction in which in which the illegality of consuming such substances has not dissuaded millions of citizens from consuming it nonetheless. Generally speaking, drug smuggling is regarded as a criminal enterprise, not an act of war. The most significant drug traffickers affecting the U.S. are Mexican cartel bosses, and not a single one of them has been summarily executed by the U.S. government. Multiple cartel leaders have been taken into U.S. custody and stood trial. The U.S. Department of Justice does not seek the death penalty in exchange for their extradition.

6). Because the British government backed opium trafficking into China during the 19th century, the Chinese court regarded it as an act of war during the First and Second Opium Wars. As I mentioned in my original post, when the Chinese executed shipwrecked English sailors during the First Opium War, these killings were characterized by the British government and international press as “cold blooded murders.”

7). The U.S. does not impose the death penalty on drug dealers in the United States, even when they are caught in possession of a large quantity of drugs intended for distribution. Before being sentenced to prison for drug dealing, the evidence against the accused is examined in a trial by an impartial jury.

8). Even if one accepts at face value the assurances of the U.S. government (something I haven’t done since 2003) that the boat crew was smuggling drugs that were eventually bound for the United States, after the vessel was struck by high a explosive that detonated it and set fire to it, it’s not plausible that the two surviving men were in a position “to carry out their hostile mission” to salvage drugs from the wreckage and press on to Miami. If you are sitting in a small boat struck by a military grade high explosive, you will likely suffer the following:

• Primary blast injuries to air-filled organs (ears, lungs, gut) from pressure changes, leading to eardrum rupture, collapsed lungs, and internal bleeding.

• Secondary injuries from flying debris.

• Burns.

It’s also doubtful that any narcotics would have remained intact and useable after being blasted and set alight by a missile.

9). Even if we accept that drug smuggling is an act of war, it is not a practice of naval warfare to execute men from afar after their vessel has already been destroyed and they have been ejected into the water. Had these two men drawn weapons and aimed them at an approaching U.S. vessel, firing upon them a second time would have been justified.

10). Citizens of a civilized nation should always ask probing questions of their government, especially when their government kills people abroad. Governments that claim to have a license to kill people abroad—without having to face scrutiny and probing questions from the citizenry—will invariably abuse this power.