Public opinion is markedly polarized regarding the US military strikes against alleged drug traffickers. Supporters emphasize the necessity of these actions to combat drug trafficking and prevent related violence, while critics express outrage over the ethical implications, lack of transparency, potential for wrongful targeting, and concerns about due process. Many highlight the absence of credible evidence supporting these strikes, leading to fears of extrajudicial killings and violations of international law.

US Military

US Government

International Community

This is a clear and unambiguous example of wrong doing. 

This issue has no “grey area” nor any nuance. It is wrong doing.

Sparky0457

It’s really a tough one to judge, because morally it’s a gray area. On one hand, we’re talking about killing. And if those strikes are on possible drug traffickers, not confirmed ones, that already raises a serious moral issue. 

The Church’s Just War teaching says military force can only be justified if the threat is certain, all peaceful options have failed, and the use of force doesn’t cause greater harm than the evil it’s meant to stop. \[CCC 2307–2317\]

If the targets aren’t verified, that alone would make such action immoral. Even if they are drug traffickers, killing them isn’t automatically justified. It would only be moral as a true last resort to stop ongoing grave harm. And of course, drug trafficking itself is evil too. They profit from death and addiction. 

So you’re left with a situation where both sides are in the wrong, which makes it hard to say who’s more guilty. 

It’s not black and white. Just a tragic mess of moral complexity.

polski-cygan

Insane theres not been more push back on the yanks extrajudicially murdering  citizens of another country

[deleted]

There’s no fentanyl coming from Venezuela tho

ProjectConfident8584

The thing is I’ve been very involved in the trade for maybe 25 years and I have never really heard shit about Venezuelans.

ATLien325

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Full text thus far:  
  
&gt;US forces have killed 14 people in strikes on four alleged drug boats in the Pacific, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says.

&gt;He said one survivor was rescued by Mexican search and rescue personnel. It is the latest in a series of attacks on boats the US says have been carrying drugs in both the Pacific and Caribbean.  
  
&gt;The latest strikes in the eastern Pacific, which Hegseth said happened on Monday at the direction of President Donald Trump, mark an escalation in what it says is a campaign to target drug traffickers. 
  
&gt;At least 51 people have now been killed in the strikes, which has led to escalation tensions between the US and the governments of both Colombia and Venezuela. In a statement on X, Hegseth said the four vessels hit on Monday "were known by our intelligence apparatus, transitioning along known narco-trafficking routes and carrying narcotics".

&gt;Hegseth added that eight "narco-terrorists" were killed in the first strike. Four and three were killed in the following two strikes.  
  
&gt;One person survived the strikes. According to Hegseth, Mexican search-and-rescue authorities "accepted the case and assumed responsibility for co-ordinating the rescue." The condition of the survivor or his current whereabouts are unclear. "The department has spent over two decades defending other homelands," Hegseth wrote. "Now, we're defending our own."

mvanigan

Nothing says Nobel Peace Prize like extrajudicial killings over international waters

PandAlex

It's wild seeing the Pentagon basically force out all the press because they wanted to control the narrative on these murders.

Gangiskhan

Killing people without any trial for the Epsteinth time

OMGILOVEBANANAS

Can we stop killing people alleged of doing things, that’d be cool.

det49er

If this doesn't get Trump a Nobel, nothing will.

TrashCapable

Can someone please explain to me how this is any different from say a cop or ICE shooting someone in the streets and saying they were carrying drugs.  Without proving anything, like identifying people or drugs.  Because unless a satellite was constantly watching with no breaks in coverage to see drugs be loaded and sent on its way until the moment of strike there is no way you could say for sure that there are drugs on the boat.  Even then the satellite images would be able to test the drugs. What kind of drugs? Or is it something else. I’m not saying we let drug runners go, I’m saying there should be due process before killing someone.  But seems like the states doesn’t care about life unless they are talking abortions. Even that they stop caring as soon as a baby is born.

Edit. For those who talk about drone strikes in Afghanistan or Iraq or places like this, for the most part drone strikes by military are against armed insurgents, or actual military, as well they are in a known zone of conflict and under the backing of congressional acts of war, or there is justification for self defence as nil action would likely result in death of American soldiers or allies.  Neither of these is the case here.

Bishopjones2112

Does the UN have nothing to say about all these extrajudicial killings in international waters? They're in international waters, right?

Are we all gonna be surprised Pikachu when other nations start abiding by the precedent? North Korea? China? Arab nations? African states? The Houthis?

percyhiggenbottom

I knew more about the Iraqis we bombed under GWB than I know about these "terrorists"

We were all gung up to prove they deserved it but these are just whispers wtf is going on?

budahfurby

The absolute fucked part is everything the administration says cannot be trusted. Every big name in this administration has already lied numerous times, to the point where nothing they say at all can be taken at face value.

In a sane world everyone would have been fired, arrested, or forced to resign. This is true facism.

ThisIsTheShway

our government are terrorists and they probably will never face justice.

acomfysweater

Remember when we were giving Obama shit about killing people with drones in war zones?

squirrelmonkie

Since when is allegations for drug smuggling punishable by immediate death?

ScrubLordAlmighty

LividBeach5364

Breaking the law, trying to start a war, BULLYING our neighbors. Murdering innocent people. For real punching down. 
It's sickening.

cmfred

I was reminded today that in Trumps first term (wrong term, sorry, see "Lorieo" link below) he pardoned the inventor of the Silk Road dark-web site who was serving a life sentence for running what was literally an Amazon type website for any drug you could possibly imagine.

Pretty sure Trump’s brain would seize permanently if he tried to explain why he pardoned history’s highest volume drug dealer ever, but murdering people on boats is ok.

jpmondx

Reminder that there has been absolutely no evidence of these boats carrying drugs.

Additional reminder that there is no capital punishment for drug possession or trafficking in the US.

This is nothing less than extrajudicial murders carried out by a deranged warlord.

QualityCoati

During the 2nd world war, declaring war with Japan gave the America a cause to round up and detain any and all Japanese citizens just for the sake of national security. Now if war is declared with a South America country, they'll have the probable cause and rights to round up any latino people in america under the guise of national security.

AGayForDeSane

Again, the people in power using regular folk, like you and I, as sacrificial pawns. They see us as expendable parasites. Why in the hell are we fighting each other when the true enemy is over there? Jfc wake up people.

GijaySorez

NewCenter

Why would the cartels put 14 dudes on one boat just to transport cargo?

Chunky-Cat

Upstairs-Morning-185

Why are there no sanctions on the US for these extrajudicial murders?

marcsaintclair

Could you imagine the response if China started doing shit like this in the South China Sea?

TheFatJesus

Ok-Investigator-7132

Murder in an attempt to "manufactuer consent" for a regime-change and oil-seizure war against Venezuela. 

Is Maduro a bad guy &amp; illegitimate ruler? Yes. But he's weak sauce (a bully's favorite punching bag), and by the way, Venezuela is not a major drug producer country. The boats destroyed were not even capable of reaching the US. 

Trump is a lame duck and lame ducks always turn to foreign policy when they're fading, and sometimes start wars to look tough.

lowkeysciguy

The extrajudicial killings will continue until democracy improves.

NotagoK

"Alleged" doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline.

ElegantButterfly54


The burden of proof always lies with the accuser — in this case, the government or military making the claim that those boats were drug smugglers. Saying ‘prove they weren’t’ flips logic on its head and ignores accountability.

Governments, including the U.S., have made mistakes and false claims before (from Iraq’s “WMDs” to mistaken airstrikes). That’s exactly why independent verification and transparent evidence matter.

If the military is confident in its intelligence, they can release verifiable proof — satellite imagery, seized cargo, or confirmation from international observers. Blind trust without evidence is how innocent people get killed without consequences.

So yes, skepticism isn’t anti-American — it’s pro-accountability.

Grouchy_Outside6722

So the USA can just kill people anywhere in the world now with no justification aside from their own thoughts? What a shit show of a government….its called murder I think….

Boydford1972

Translation:


Trump administration commits crimes against humanity, murdering random civilians with no due process

jimthewanderer

U.S. indiscriminately kills people from South America for being in a boat in the ocean.

HollowDanO

Murders INC. America is amazing: you can go from being on bullshit tv to just straight up murdering people and destroying democracy and the rule of law. Serial killer country.

HighlanderAbruzzese

The “pro-life” party, ladies and gentlemen!

Frankyyy50

Killed without due process of law translates to murdering innocent people. There will most likely be a reckoning at some point

Rustyguts257

Assuming they actually have 100% verifiable proof that these vessels are carrying narcotics - so? Taking human life because their cargo contains drugs in international waters is beyond belief. Are we going to start blowing up vehicles traveling along I-95 based on suspicion of party favors in the trunk? 

Hegseth is a terrorist backed by the US government. This entire administration is a fucking catastrophe.

Baxkit

Is there any evidence to actually support the claim that these people are drug traffickers?

All I’m seeing is the US unilaterally murdering people abroad while providing essentially no evidence whatsoever aside from “trust me bro, they’re baddies”.

And even if you want to claim as an absolutely indisputable fact that they are drug traffickers, on what grounds can you just murder them without any attempts to apprehend them? 

IMO, and this is me putting on my tin-foil hat, Trump is absolutely itching for a conflict overseas to distract from his domestic issues. A target like drug traffickers is one which a lot of people can get behind and with the added bonus of being able to link them regimes like Venezuela’s which Trump clearly has an issue with.

wrghf

liukasteneste28

Does Kegsbreath believe drug smugglers are still running drug boats currently knowing they could be blown to bits?

Hopeful-Occasion469

All this over cocaine? Not sure how to make sense of this response when crack is basically at all-time low consumption rates and opioids are the obvious driver of deaths among those facing addiction... Unless your goal is broad conflict on the back of boogeymen.

Evolvin

Not sure I’d be pleasure cruising in the temperate zones these days if I had boat money.

GladVeterinarian5120

So no process, USA just randomly killing people now because they think they are drug trafficking? Going full authoritarian regime in less than a year. Checks calendar… nope it’s not 1930’s…

Pauls-boutique

Senate voted to block these extrajudicial/summary executions two weeks ago, 48-51, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and John Fetterman voting against.

E_Cayce

https://preview.redd.it/jb4tf5w66wxf1.png?width=640&amp;format=png&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=8c0ffef8fb1d24738b0b844a648b2acb6101714b

This entire administration

spongoboi

Coast guard already had this figured out, just use a 50 cal to shoot out the engine from a helicopter and imprison the crew

BosnianSerb31

At this point, I feel like the US is just testing their military equipment/capabilities before committing to regime change. Also could be trying to provoke Venezuela into doing something very stupid so Trump (Rubio) has a casus belli.







I can't imagine why else the US would waste so much money and resources (and political capital, if that's still a thing) on killing a bunch of innocents and/or low-level drug movers.

yayitsemily

Four is an interesting number; since about [1/4 of Coast Guard "drug" interdictions turn out to be mistaken](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/oct/22/rand-paul/venezuela-drug-boats-coast-guard-florida/), it's very likely that we just destroyed three drug boats and one boat of innocent people.

That's the optimistic view, assuming that Hegsethian incompetence and a directive from Captain Lethality to kill as many Venezuelans as fast as possible hasn't worsened the ratio.

gnurdette

Surely it costs a lot more to do this than run of the mill coast guard interdiction. Deploy more resources for surveillance and tracking, and for deeper coordination with caribbean nations, sure. But morality and legality aside this is a great example of waste, fraud, and abuse.

revmuun

I think it’s beyond obvious at this point that Trump, Miller, Hagseth, et al, simply like killing people. They are drunk with power and have convinced themselves that killing enough of the right people is an essential and necessary part of enacting their agenda.

Dunter_Mutchings

Most cynical: this is a pretext to a full scale conflict that the admin is manufacturing in order to  invoke wartime powers and snuff out domestic dissent. They want to numb the population to extrajudicial drone strikes and insert the newfound “Narco-terrorist” bogeyman into the American conscious. 

Least cynical: this is a bloody media spectacle, likely someone in the admins pet project, and it will be abandoned before things escalate too much.

TATgoLegend

Imagine if Trump used all the time and energy used to kill civilians, to actually try to pretend like he gives a fuck about his country

Ok so we no longer need trials and evidence because those life or death decisions are based on solid beliefs from the same people who told you they’re eating the cats and dogs, and who are now suing the Tylenol people based on rumors that it might maybe cause autism

What could possibly go wrong

ThirdSunRising

So what I don't get is... do Latin American countries secretly *like* that Trump is doing this? Are they happy someone else is doing their dirty work and OK if some of their innocent civilians die in the mix?

Because while of course no country will provide military pushback against this, the lack of investigation or diplomatic pushback speaks volumes.

gnarlytabby

&gt; “If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
   
&gt; Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,”

… 

If Hegseth does not face judgement in my lifetime I will face God and WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL

LondonCallingYou

Akovsky87

A disturbing detail is that after realizing there was a survivor, the navy seemingly passed of S&amp;R to Mexico.

There are legitimate reasons you would do that if Mexican assets are closer but that would then seem to suggest that we’re killing these guys rights outside of Mexican territorial waters

beoweezy1

A_Random_Latvian

&gt;It is a greater crime to summarily execute people suspected of drug trafficking than drug trafficking is.

Exactly. Not only is this a monstrously illegal and immoral injustice, but it's *obviously* so.

But even beyond the unthinkable wrongdoing of murdering suspects without trial, they're doing it to foreign nationals. Isn't that a clear-cut act of war?

commander_biden

Doesn't this make Trump and everyone else responsible among the worst mass murderers in US history?

q8gj09

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I did worry that this will justify amplifying the cruelty towards immigrants. That part I can’t speak optimistically about.

However, I will point out that this is a severe escalation of tactics in a very short amount of time. Even the Nazis spent longer building up to this. To me that feels like it’s because they’re being closed in on, with them getting much more pushback from people they didn’t expect (particularly people they expected to rely on) than it requires to do something like this. I know that they have plans to rig elections (whether they succeed or not is to be seen and really up to us) but what they are doing only draws more attention to their exploits, and considering the energy of the protests more people are tuned to their corruption than ever, and have shown that they’re not willing to take this lying down. It feels like this was always in the cards but they’re speedrunning/fast-forwarding to later in the plan in order to get it done before it all falls apart, but it doesn’t necessarily work because not only do the dates not line up, but they didn’t plan for a lot of what’s happened this year to happen (especially things like Mamdani’s overwhelming popularity, the general political attitude leaning more left as it goes on, and whatever the fuck is going on with Donnie’s cognitive health). The truth is they need MAGA to be stronger and fight harder than ever, and they aren’t doing that for various reasons. The American public hasn’t even used our strongest and most effective tactics of protest yet, and the wire they’re hanging on is weaker and weaker each day

ShamelessCatDude

Reading the article the headline is kinda iffy as when asked about actually doing strikes on land within Venezuela he said that they would go to congress first and even though he said that congress would totally let him, its just him saying stuff. I know that the main fear with this is immigrants getting even more marginalized, but atleast right now this whole thing seems to be just a Sabre rattling fight between us and Venezuela where unfortunately besides some boats no one is going to make the first move 

NOVA27C

“… To just take down anyone with tattoos and brown skins.”

Okay. I did a little bit of homework. They have since TACO’ed on the tattoo crap and won’t go back to it any time soon. They might do a lot of racial profiling(the brown skin thing) but more often than not, ICE and their puppetmasters taco one way or another. Way too many judges and legislators are on our side. Plenty of avenues are available and when properly confronted, they scamper away. We’ll be prepared but we will get through this. Together. 

Independent-Bus-3284

Trump insist alot of things, actually acting on them is another thing.

Ilovemiia1

does anyone know about any americans trying to fight this? judges trying to bar him, hose members trying to sue him, anything like that?

avatarroku157

Again, Chump says random outrageous junk... yada yada yada... and...

https://preview.redd.it/qw83x75z0bxf1.jpeg?width=960&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=d77787e5ffef17a46678d0ef2ed24b79f31a6f16

SpukiKitty2

The fentanyl excuse is bullshit.   there is currently no real evidence that fentanyl is being produced there. This is according to multiple U.S. government reports and expert analyses, which state that illicit fentanyl production affecting the United States is almost entirely based in Mexico. 
Evidence against fentanyl production in Venezuela
Official intelligence assessments: The U.S. State Department's March 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report and the DEA's 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment both identify Mexico as the significant source of illicit fentanyl for the U.S. and do not include Venezuela on the list of producers.
Expert analysis: A September 2025 New York Times analysis found no proof that fentanyl is manufactured in or trafficked from Venezuela or elsewhere in South America. This was further corroborated by analyses from the Washington Office on Latin America and the International Crisis Group.
Fentanyl trafficking routes: Law enforcement data shows that the vast majority of fentanyl entering the U.S. comes through the southern land border, often concealed in vehicles. The maritime routes from Venezuela are not considered a significant vector for fentanyl trafficking.
Trace amounts in other drugs: While some cocaine seized in the U.S. has shown traces of fentanyl, experts say the mixing likely occurs in Mexico or the U.S., not in South America.

ObservingtheLunacy

The US military conducted operations in the Pacific, killing 14 suspects involved in drug trafficking. This has raised ethical concerns regarding anti-narcotics operations.

US Military Strikes on Drug Traffickers

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