politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The US isn't supposed to execute people for smuggling cocaine.
You shouldn't just be able to call them enemy combatants if they're not even combatants. Words are supposed to have meanings.
By the logic that you can just call things whatever you want and then you're magically allowed to treat them as that thing, then why not just call them "fish" and say that the American military was just "fishing"? That makes just as much sense to me as what they did.
They're being very specific with the language, calling them "narco-terrorists".
That is correct. You are supposed to pardon them.
The US has been using this kind of logic since Sept 12 2001 (arc)
A lot more good information and history in that article, but the important point is that because they're not soldiers (i.e. lawful combatants), they don't get Geneva Convention protection, but because they're not criminals either they don't get due process protection either. It's a completely blatant and stupid way to just ditch all the humanitarian guardrails around government violence we spent the 20th century building, it was fucked 20 years ago and it's fucked today but we never held the people doing it accountable so here we are.
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.
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.
Welcome to realizing how actual geopolitics work. There are no rules, just "gentleman agreements" that most of the time major powers have held because they worried about reprisals for breaking the unwritten rules.
There is no such thing as "law." Law is a word we use for the systems that keep citizens of a country from harming each other or the economy. When you're a nation, there are no international police who will ticket you for literally just doing whatever the fuck you want to whoever you want.