Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach, none of these people fall under the US laws you think they do

The legal basis is them being declared Unlawful Combatants under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once they do they are enemy combatants in war and can be killed.

This law was so thoroughly used by all presidents since then that you cannot really claim it's illegal

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bulbar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach

To me it sounds like that killing was (possibly) illegal. Idk about that 2006 Act though. From a moral stand point it doesn't matter if it was (possibly) illegal or not however.

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Den_VR 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It matters quite a lot, it’s the biblical difference between killing and murder.

	▲	bulbar 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Law at biblical times had a different foundation than today. Today the foundation is legal positivism, which is the philosophical decoupling of moral and law (which sounds terrible at first glance, but is important if you think it through). Therefore, it is not useful to apply the definition of the terms from back then, because the whole context in which they were used doesn't exist anymore. In the Western world, the meaning of murder and killing is different and while that described action might be an unlawful killing (by accident) it most likely was not a murder.

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pstuart 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners. Just because Trump declares something to be true doesn't make it true (although his lackeys will act as if it is).

This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does nothing to address the problem. In fact that very war is the reason why it's a problem in the first place. Remember that an earlier batch of dangerous drug dealers were Americans working out of doctors' offices.

	▲	breppp 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I assume the pretext is actually the war on terror because of the heavy involvement of Venezuela and its drug cartels with financing and supporting of Hezbollah and the IRGC https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/venezuela-... https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA3...
	▲	vkou an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners. And even at worst, if the Navy boarded those boats, found drugs, summarily executing everyone on board would still be murder. Rule of law is what separates us from animals, and the people ordering and carrying out these killings fall squarely in the latter. Carrying water for this is beyond the pale, but is, of course, fully in alignment with a cornerstone of a political philosophy - that there are rules that protect some people, but do not bind them, and that there are rules that bind other people, but do not protect them.
	▲	NoMoreNicksLeft an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does That's unclear. We'd have to know more about what sort of deterrent it is making on the drug runners. Quite possibly this does have them shitting their pants and delaying shipments hoping to avoid the risk. At the very least that's not absolutely impossible. When someone says "it's expensive theater" in this circumstance, I think that their criticism has more to do with their objection to the person ordering the strikes and less to do with the effectiveness of them, especially considering that we might not know for months what the true impact is.

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pyrale 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"...And 50 water buffalos too! They were all certified!"