Evidence! Evidence! They Don't Need No Stinking Evidence!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The United States military, which ultimately takes its marching orders from Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump, sank another small boat last night which supposedly was carrying drugs to US buyers.    This boat was sunk in the eastern Pacific Ocean and four people were killed.  That brings the total number of small boats sunk by our government in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean - just north of the South American countries of Venezuela and Colombia -  to fourteen, along with at least 61 deaths.  Our government has yet to produce evidence that any of these small vessels were actually carrying drugs or involved in the drug trade..

Friday the Pentagon announced that it is deploying the USS Gerald R. Ford, our country's largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, to the region to "detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit activities."  Fighter aircraft from the "Ford" will conceivably be used to fight drug manufacture and trafficking, on land and sea.  Perhaps then our military will have some actual evidence that what it is doing on the high seas is actually producing results other than just random killings and destruction of small vessels.

Until then, however, the evidence-free murders that the world is witnessing are being referred to (in more polite terms) as "extrajudicial killings" in much of the national and international press.  Extrajudicial killings are, according to Google's AI:

"The deliberate killing of a person by a government agent or with state consent outside of any legal framework or judicial proceeding.   This practice, also known as "extrajudicial execution" is a profound violation of the most fundamental human right:  the right to life."

Declaring that a crime is being committed, without evidence, and then killing the transgressors without due process or any opportunity to explain or defend their actions, such as being out on the ocean in a boat, is certainly not the type of justice that was practiced in the America in which most of us grew up and came of age.   That was the way bad guys ran their countries - places like Russia, China, Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

The United States of America was better than that!   We were a beacon for freedom, democracy and the rule of law.  Now we are murdering people in small boats on the open seas - just because we can.

Racism, bullying, and murder are not American values, and they cannot be allowed to prevail!