Blowing up Drug Smugglers and Their Boats: It's LEGAL

Good morning! Glad you’re with us. It’s Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. 

Today in History:

1979: The WHO declares the end of smallpox. I note science is saying we should be ready for its return.

1965: A Charlie Brown Christmas debuts on CBS. Even then, the net execs weren’t overly happy about its Christian pinnings. I’ll be writing about that show later this month.

1762: British Parliament accepts the Treaty of Paris.

Birthdays include John Malkovich, Dame Judi Dench, and John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. I'm quite sure there are still some English Lit majors who will groan at the memory.

We’ve heard a lot lately, with theatrical tears flowing, about blowing up drug smuggling boats and the smugglers with them. The thing has gotten so very loud from the left that the most logical assumption is that they’re defending the druggies and not American citizens. Perhaps they've simply been using this as another cudgel against Donald Trump.

There was an interesting and quite educational article from the Wall Street Journal just recently:

Three men who have manned these drug boats, known as “go fasts,” spoke to The Wall Street Journal, describing a once little-known but essential part of the narcotics trade that is now in President Trump’s sights.

They run drug cargoes worth as much as $70 million on the sleek 40-foot-long boats, often built from fiberglass and powered by oversize outboards. These boats are the workhorses for the traffickers along 2,000 miles of Colombian coastline—and hundreds more miles in Ecuador and Venezuela.
...

In an interview in the southwestern Colombia city of Cali where he lives, the slim, soft-spoken 29-year-old Colombian recalled how the operation began with the speedboat shooting out of a mangrove swamp, twin 250-horsepower engines roaring as the pilot next to him gunned the craft under a night sky.

The pilot kept the throttle down, never slowing as the vessel raced offshore, far beyond the inlets where the drugs were loaded, past Colombia’s territorial limit and into international waters, 200 nautical miles from land.

The crewman, whose job was to keep the fuel flowing into the engines, said he scanned the horizon for Colombian navy patrols as the boat slammed on the water, the pilot pushing for speed in a violent ride that unnerved the crew.

“Traveling that fast is not easy. I tried not to pay attention,” he said. “And the waves were huge.”

Twelve hours later, the craft idled—ever so briefly—until what counterdrug officials call a “narco sub” appeared and stopped alongside. The boat’s three crewmen then transferred a half ton of cocaine—worth $12 million on the street—onto the semisubmersible. Skimming along the waterline, the new craft and crew headed north to Mexico, the next link before reaching America’s cocaine market.

So much for a lot of the narrative about how these guys are fishing, eh? So much also for the argument that the drugs are not headed stateside, because the speed boats can't make it there on the fuel they carry.

I wrote yesterday that the Democrats now find themselves trapped in the mire of their own creation, particularly immigration, often coming down on the side of immigrants and not American citizens. Here’s another such case. And they cry and moan that we aren’t being fair to them, that we’re not humane, etc. The thing is, and as I suggested yesterday, that it wasn’t always this way. The same situation obtains here. 

I've brought the receipts. Here’s a fun fact that most of you won't know:
  
Chuck Schumer voted “Yes” for the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act of 1986 which authorized the military to fire on drug smuggling boats. The House approved it 392-16, and the Senate approved it 97-2. Both houses of Congress that year were Democrat dominated. Funny how Democrats don't say much about this today. As I asked yesterday, why the change in attitude? What is causing, in this case, Democrats to defend drug runners?

In any event, so much for firing on and sinking drug runners being illegal. So much for the questions of how we know they’re running drugs. The truth is that if they really cared, they'd know because all the answers to these things are online.  They're simply making another argument against "Orange Man Bad".  If they did care, a simple Google search would have revealed what I'm going to show you now.

Mind you, the law I pointed out is U.S. law. Here are some additional facts that should, in a sane world, put an end to any argument about getting those animals under control. Mind you, I'm invoking long-established international law here.

A boat in international waters 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 so, by the very definition of the thing, you cannot commit a war crime against them. This is the UN talking, not the GOP. So much for that claim from the Democrats.

A flagged ship is an extension of its flag-state’s sovereignty. A stateless vessel is not. That’s international law. This matters because the charge of “war crimes” being laid by some, mostly on the left, makes the assumption that such vessels and people are protected. The thing is that a stateless vessel is legally NOT protected. No flag, no state. No State, no war crime.  End of story.

Now, before you start doubting me, let me suggest a peek at UNCLOS Articles 92, 94, 110.

Vaporizing those boats is completely legal, by the literal wording of both US and International law. Note please that in neither case is there any mention of due process. Maybe now, someone in the legacy media will actually have the stones to ask why the left and some in the GOP are so all-fired worried about these pirates. But frankly, I doubt it.

I actually wonder if the Coke they found in the White House a while back, that they supposedly can't identify the owner of, came by way of these speedboats. The amount of that junk that shows up in the D.C. area may explain why some are so reluctant to those boats and their cargo.

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