I agree, but it’s also consistent with how the US operates. Through Afghanistan’s and Iraq, anyone appearing as a military-aged male in the vicinity of an operation (e.g. a village where insurgents were shooting from) was labeled an enemy combatant and treated as valid targets.
Especially not true if the second strike. It’s such a farce to claim “they’re still trafficking” when it is just a few survivors out in the ocean clinging to the wreckage
I think it echoes that video of those two Apache crews blowing up civilians in Baghdad and then targetting people who came to help the injured. One of the most chilling parts of that video was probably how casually routine it all seemed. Can only imagine what footage existed that never got leaked.
I don’t think it’s consistent with your example, because nobody in or near the boats was an insurgent. I’m not saying that it’s not similar, just that it’s a clear divergence. They don’t have any pretense that anybody on or near the boat was planning to attack them.
I agree, I’m separating the justification of the engagement from how they label people. So the parallel I’m drawing only has to do with how they loosely label people as part of a group based on broad characteristics once they decide a group can be a valid military target, i.e. “insurgents” or “narco-terrorists”.
Declaring drug smugglers as valid military targets is certainly new, but ordering strikes on military targets on the thin rationale of “hey, they look like the group we said we can hit” is not new for the US military.
If it’s not obvious, I disagree with both of these issues.
I agree, but it’s also consistent with how the US operates. Through Afghanistan’s and Iraq, anyone appearing as a military-aged male in the vicinity of an operation (e.g. a village where insurgents were shooting from) was labeled an enemy combatant and treated as valid targets.
Especially not true if the second strike. It’s such a farce to claim “they’re still trafficking” when it is just a few survivors out in the ocean clinging to the wreckage
I think it echoes that video of those two Apache crews blowing up civilians in Baghdad and then targetting people who came to help the injured. One of the most chilling parts of that video was probably how casually routine it all seemed. Can only imagine what footage existed that never got leaked.
I don’t think it’s consistent with your example, because nobody in or near the boats was an insurgent. I’m not saying that it’s not similar, just that it’s a clear divergence. They don’t have any pretense that anybody on or near the boat was planning to attack them.
I agree, I’m separating the justification of the engagement from how they label people. So the parallel I’m drawing only has to do with how they loosely label people as part of a group based on broad characteristics once they decide a group can be a valid military target, i.e. “insurgents” or “narco-terrorists”.
Declaring drug smugglers as valid military targets is certainly new, but ordering strikes on military targets on the thin rationale of “hey, they look like the group we said we can hit” is not new for the US military.
If it’s not obvious, I disagree with both of these issues.