By Ron Paul | Source
Last week the Pentagon, under “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth, carried out yet another military attack on a boat in the high seas that the Administration claims is smuggling drugs. That makes 23 boats blown up by the US military in the waters off Latin America – most near Venezuela – and nearly 100 persons killed.
To date the US government has provided no evidence to back up its claim that these boats are smuggling fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that Venezuela neither manufactures nor transports fentanyl to the US. In fact, the DEA still concludes that Venezuela is barely a minor player in the drug game.
Is this really about drugs? Or is it about “regime change” for Venezuela?
When Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of US Southern Command, raised concerns about the legality of bombing boats on the high seas and extrajudicial killing, he was pushed out by Hegseth. His concerns were ignored.
When lawyers at the National Security Council, Pentagon, and Justice Department raised objections to the boat attacks they were reassigned or fired, according to press reports. Finally, President Trump’s own appointed lawyers at the Justice Department came up with a justification for killings. But it’s classified.
Last week the media reported on an incident from September where two survivors of the US strike were left clinging to the wreckage of their boat when the orders came to kill them too. It was clearly an illegal order, even according to the Pentagon’s own Laws of War manual.
Many Americans will not want to hear this, but this entire operation is illegal and immoral – from blowing up survivors to blowing up the boats in the first place. There is no legal justification to use military force against boats on the high sea that pose no imminent military threat to the United States.
Many supporters of this policy argue that the killings are “self-defense” because “narco-terrorists” are using narcotics as weapons against the American people. That is certainly what the Administration is claiming, having invented “narco-terrorist” as a new term to justify the killings.
Sadly, this shows how effective government war propaganda still is. It was used when both Republican and Democratic Administrations wanted to launch wars against Saddam Hussein, against Gaddafi, against Assad, and so on. New slogans are invented and a good deal of the public happily adopts them as their own. Anyone who challenges the new slogans is deemed unpatriotic or weak. When the war goes badly they pretend they were never fooled by government lies. Then it happens again and they repeat the new war slogans.
The “war on drugs” was launched by President Nixon a half century ago. It is obviously another failed government policy. Raising the stakes in a failed war is foolish and counterproductive. The solution to smuggling during alcohol prohibition was not to start bombing the bootleggers. It was to come to terms with basic economics: you cannot kill demand by killing supply.
More Americans die each year from alcohol use than from fentanyl use. Will strikes soon be launched against “alco-terrorists” who are killing Americans? Of course not…we hope. That is the danger of throwing away the laws of war: anything can happen next.
Congress has the authority to stop Secretary Hegseth from killing people on the high seas. It should do so without delay.
There is much more going on with Venezuela than anyone realizes. Going back many years, the real reasons and operations have to remain secret to be successful.
Go ahead and look up how many people have died from fentanyl in the USA in the last ten years, and try to tell us again we’re not allowed to kill mass-murderers in drug boats loaded with chemical poisons meant to kill us- these are literally bioweapons, with one singular contact strong enough to kill.
Besides, you’re telling lies. Allow me to educate you.
A boat in international waters that is not running a national flag is categorized in international law the same way a pirate is. Such boats have absolutely no national or international protections, and you cannot commit a war crime against them.
A vessel in international waters is required under UNCLOS to sail under the flag of a specific nation. If it does not, it is legally considered a stateless vessel. A stateless vessel has no right to the protections normally afforded to ships under a national flag, including immunity from interference by other states.
UNCLOS Articles 92, 94, 110, and customary maritime law spell out the consequences clearly:
1. Stateless vessels have no sovereign protection. A flagged ship is an extension of its flag-state’s sovereignty. A stateless vessel is not. This matters because “war crimes” presuppose protected persons or protected property. A stateless vessel is legally unprotected.
2. Any state may stop, board, search, seize, or disable, a stateless vessel. UNCLOS Article 110 explicitly authorizes boarding and seizure. The law does not require states to risk their own personnel or assets while doing so. Disabling a vessel that refuses inspection, including firing on it, is legally permitted under both UNCLOS and long-established state practice.
3. War crimes require an armed conflict. You cannot commit a “war crime” outside an armed conflict. War crimes occur only within the context of international humanitarian law (IHL). Enforcing maritime law against a stateless vessel is a law enforcement action, not an IHL situation.
No armed conflict = no war crime possible.
4. Lethal force may be used when a vessel refuses lawful orders. The International Maritime Organization’s “Use of Force” guidance for maritime interdiction recognizes that disabling fire, even lethal force, is lawful when a vessel refuses lawful boarding, attempts to flee, poses a threat, or engages in illicit activities such as piracy or narcotics trafficking.
Once again: law enforcement rules apply, not IHL.
5. Sinking a stateless vessel is not prohibited by UNCLOS. UNCLOS permits seizure of a stateless vessel and leaves the means entirely to the enforcing state so long as necessity and proportionality are respected. If the vessel flees, attacks, or refuses lawful commands, sinking it is legally permissible. Many states routinely do this to drug-smuggling vessels (e.g., semi-submersibles) without it ever being treated as a war crime.
6. No flag = no jurisdictional shield. The entire reason international law requires ships to fly a flag is to prevent this exact situation. Flagless vessels are legally vulnerable by design.
Because a stateless vessel has no protected status, because UNCLOS authorizes interdiction of such vessels, because lethal force may be used in maritime law enforcement when necessary, and because war crimes require an armed conflict that is not present here, sinking an unflagged ship in international waters is not a war crime.
So I hope I’ve educated you on what the law really says about drug boats, and hopefully you’ll side with the American people instead of foreign pirate terrorists moving forward.