More people need to get this. Obama and Biden conducted airstrikes with the exact same expectations and the exact same “unlawful combatant” policy allowing us to ignore the Geneva conventions.

I guarantee anyone reading this that the guy calling these strikes has done the same thing his entire career. If they want to change that policy then go for it. But don’t expect anyone to be prosecuted over doing it before that.

That would require the administration’s own people to bring those charges.

And I can already tell you the words you’re going to hear if this makes it to court. “Unlawful Combatant”, a designation we created so we could ignore the rules of war while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump declared the Venezuelan drug cartels to be terrorists. Now they’re treating them like we treated the Taliban in Afghanistan.

These guys are literally just waiting for the next outrageous thing to push this one out of the news cycle.

And yeah, we’ve been doing airstrikes like this for 20 years.

That’s what these court battles in Los Angeles and Chicago have been about. I’ve been staying very top level but suffice to say he cannot just yell martial law and charge into a blue city. Laws describe when and how it is proper to do so. The court push back is important not because we think it will restrain Trump, but because the generals are not personally loyal to Trump. As a reminder, Trump wanted to shoot Americans in his first term. It was the establishment that told him no. He tried to directly order the military and a general literally yelled at him for it.

The threat is overwhelmingly from DHS and DOJ. They have the authority, ability, and will. ICE just got funded to an amount equal the British military. The only thing missing is the volunteers and the federal law enforcement training centers have pushed back training for anyone other than ICE to handle the glut of new ICE agents. ICE’s detention budget is also now far larger than the federal prison budget. They could theoretically hold about 8 percent of the US population with the budget they got.

Everyone is worried about the military while our federal law enforcement is doing military style presence patrols in Los Angeles.

Oh it’s definitely been US policy for decades. The videos are out there. If you want to talk about what constitutes being “out of combat” and whether the Hague would take the case it could certainly be an interesting exercise. However I doubt the Hague would take it up and neither the Department of Justice nor the military courts are going to take it up without a directive from the President. Democrats aren’t going to fall all over themselves to give that directive either though because it would mean Biden and Obama also officially presided over a regime of war crimes.

At the end of the day it comes down to the US having X policy that lies in a gray area of international law. Which leads me to another Bush era policy that we’ve never really rescinded. If you’re not a uniformed soldier in service to an enemy country the US doesn’t consider you to have the protections that a soldier would have after surrendering. It was a neat little policy that we used to allow ourselves to torture people labeled terrorists. So yeah that’s another thing I expect to hear in the next few days, “cartel members are unlawful combatants.”

Yup and then they held snap elections right after. Russia was sore that Ukraine actually supported the pro-EU party and invaded Donbas under the fiction that it was a locally led and staffed rebellion against Kyiv. But there wasn’t enough local support for a rebellion.

To use force against Americans inside America without martial law, an act of Congress, or an extenuating circumstance like self defense.

Trump really pushed the envelope by ordering troops to accompany ICE raids under the authorization to guard federal property. But they still couldn’t do anything but defend themselves technically. It’s just that he effectively tied their self defense to the ICE agents defense. I’m pretty sure the courts knocked that one back and the military pulled back though. Which is why they’ve gone so hard with Border Patrol, ICE, and any volunteers from within DHS/DOJ that have badges.

Nah, then it just becomes a defacto situation of the content creation companies (Disney, Sony, etc) owning the telecom companies. So you will truly be a single content household, like a Disney Household or a Paramount Household.

Sony wanted mo money. Yo money wasn’t enough for them. So they got a jury to agree that Cox owes them 1 Billion dollars.

Let’s all sing about how much we love Corporate Governance.

^{Please don’t shut off my internet telecom daddy I’ll drink another Mountain Dew Verification Can!}

Ah yes, but with Trump bending over backwards to accommodate Putin the Russians needn’t worry.

The 2014 elections were actually pretty close in those areas. A month later the Russians invaded the Donbas though so there wasn’t any chance to be pro-Ukrainian after that. And then there’s the fact that people tend to not like like invading armies. I’m pretty sure anyone still in the area isn’t a fan of the people shelling them every day.

Also, it’s not a wasteland, it’s actually a pretty strategic area.

We don’t summarily execute people at the president’s say.

What do you think a war is? We already set the precedent of being able to declare war on non-state actors and the War Powers act gives him the authority to start shooting without Congressional approval. Which means an American President can legally, (to the US), tell the military they need to go kill cocaine farmers until Congress passes a bill to stop him. And the President can veto that bill. Meaning the legal threshold for Congress to stop the military from killing foreigners in foreign places is the same threshold as impeaching the President.

The War Powers resolution worked as long as it did because it was actually one of many gentleman’s agreements that are now defunct.

Unfortunately the US doesn’t consider that one to be an illegal order. It is heartless, and unnecessary. But ever since the advent of airpower the US has maintained that planes, helicopters, and drones are not required to accept surrender because it is impractical to impossible in any given situation. So the standard is usually to keep firing. Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom had notable exceptions with mass surrender instructions dropped beforehand. And again, I know that’s not reassuring. But this is why politics isn’t supposed to be a team game. This is the level of power we are making decisions on. For other things that are completely legal but most people don’t realize; heavy machineguns can absolutely be used to target individual soldiers; Flamethrowers are still 100 percent legal against military targets; You can be shot after your surrender is accepted, (I’ll expand below); You will be shot if you do not or cannot actively surrender; and Nobody respects the rule against shooting medics and medevacs.

To expand on the most inflammatory one, the only time you are “safe” is while you are in custody. Modern combat operations move very fast and surrendering people are often left in place after their weapons are removed/destroyed. If they don’t actively surrender again to follow on forces then they are legal targets because we haven’t developed psychic powers yet. This especially matters with surrendered wounded who may not be in a condition to surrender again. Shooting bodies as you advance is legal and expected in a war. You just aren’t allowed to personally go back and shoot someone again without them presenting a new threat. With that information in mind you should also know the US military and any professional military sends multiple waves across a battlefield. It is incredibly lethal, by design.

I say all this not to call you out but to highlight that war is a giant bag of dicks that most people outside the military are still naïve about.

The other pressing thing here is this is an order to fire on a declared enemy, outside our border. Meaning the president signed a sheet of paper declaring them to be the enemy, Congress hasn’t thrown a flag, and they are beyond the jurisdiction of law enforcement. That is very clear cut to the military. If you change any one of those 3 parameters then things go to gray zone or illegal very quickly. Someone asked me some months ago while Trump was vomiting about Greenland if the military would obey that order versus an order to hunt down and kill Americans inside America. And the answer is Greenland would be fucked but those Americans are pretty safe from the military. They are not however safe from anonymous DOJ task forces and DHS.

I don’t think many people realize that cost of living has increased so much that the lifestyle we used to associate with the middle class now isn’t available until 100k without kids or significantly more with kids. Income for the 0-89th percentile has gone down in real terms for decades. 90th to 99th has held stagnant against inflation. Only that top 1 percent has been beating inflation, and they’ve been really beating it. Rand estimated that there’s been a transfer of something like 47 Trillion USD (not a typo) from the rest of us into the top 1 percent since 1975.

Anyone who thinks this was the norm also thinks that women didn’t enter the workforce until World War 2. The real story here is how cost of living is now coming for echelons of society that didn’t have to worry about it before because greedy billionaires require multiple super yachts and support vessels.

Towing ICE vehicles, blocking their driveways, and swarming ice raids with too many people to control is ineffective?

It’s true many people stay asleep until things are forced on them. But that goes for both sides. That’s why we talk about activation and activists. Holding signs has never been about persuading the bad guys to stop being bad guys. It’s about activating more people.

Any level with a low number can be controlled by elites. Debate can be done on forums. Good ideas go up, bad ideas go down in flames.

To add to the other response the leaders of both nationalities were veterans of the Prague Spring. They had no appetite for more violence. Could you truly say the same of the US?

Congratulations on finding a split I missed though.

Sure, for the low price of a lifetime pension I’ll benevolently dismantle the oligarchy; ban guns; make cars luxury items; massively expand mass transit; and bring in universal health and education!

Just ignore the claims that I’ve actually jailed or killed my opposition; held the families of so called “freedom fighters” so they’ll turn themselves and their buddies in; made travel outside your area and healthcare impossible without government approval; and completely changed the history everyone learns.

Okay that’s obviously pretty extreme. Just a reminder that if you’re not careful even well intentioned dictatorships can be very oppressive. And every dictatorship is on a timer to a coup or revolution. And resetting that timer is not pretty. The only way off the treadmill is to have elections again.

Anyone under the delusion that splitting a country can be peaceful should research any split since the idea of nationalism took hold. India and Pakistan are still the odds on favorite to kill us all with a nuclear winter.

Tossed with reckless abandonment sounds like a fun time.