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Comment by sam_goody | Hacker News Reader

1. Deaths by overdose, especially of Fentanyl is through the roof (it has surpassed road accidents, heart attacks, etc.)

2. We have got to do something

3. This is something

4. The president has something to offer as a solution. For everything. (It is unusual to have a president who is so willing to try to solve everything.)

5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.

Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance.

As someone who has lost family members to Fentanyl, I at least recognize my bias :/

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You realise that killing people without even identifying them first, and even going as far as invading a foreign country is not a solution in any shape or form. It’s not a ”something”.

If the market for fentanyl is there, the drug will come. And one of the reasons the market became so big because of all the legal opioid drugs being so broadly prescribed.

I am sorry to hear you lost someone to Fentanyl. It really is wreaking havoc upon American society.

In the majority of cases (not to assume the one you experienced) this is but a new variant of 'slow suicide', alongside excessive drinking, gambling, various forms of risk seeking.

It's not enough for me to agree that making a new Vietnan is 'something we've got to do'. The scars of America's war adventures are widely visible and part of the reason we uniquely suffer from these slow suicides.

Blowing up other citizens is easy (at first). Not unlike the addicts this purports to protect, this administration thinks this one quick fix they don't want you to know about will cure our ails. Unfortunately the something we can do (must do) is hard. It means addressing why American society is increasingly disenfranchised, lonely, and unhappy.

"3. This is something"

We don't even know what "this" even is.

There are no receipts: no narco captures, no confiscated drug hauls.

It’s an opportunity to find out which military officers are good soldiers vs. good men.

>Since early September, the United States has carried out at least 14 strikes against alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing 61 people.

Alleged drug vessels. Any proof there were drugs on those boats? Do we even know who has been on those boats?

Enough evidence to be suspicious. Not enough evidence to be sufficient for what is required to convict and sentence for a crime, that is beyond a reasonable doubt.

One would hope the latter is required, before going through with an execution.

In reality, most likely these are legit drug traffickers but being used as pawns for geopolitics rather than a meaningful attempt to curb drug use.

What evidence? Have any links? Do we even know their names? No? (The government even admitted they don't know who they've killed). Strange, huh.

How can we have enough evidence to know these people deserve to die for drug crimes when we don't even know who they are?

The few people who survived, we just released them. No charging them with crimes, no courts, just sending them on their way. If they were really hardened drug criminals with enough evidence to murder everyone else around them, how were we not able to charge them with any crime?

Most likely, these are human traffickers, second most likely, they are gold traffickers, third most likely they are drug traffickers. Or maybe some of them are just fishermen, which is actually more likely than all the previous cases.

If you take a look at submarines like this one they blew up

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153966324414...

They are almost always used as narco trafficking. However, we only know that is usually the case, not that this particular one was used for that purpose.

There are a handful of civilian legal use submarines of this form and submersibles used for tourist and science purposes, however if a scientist or tourist rich enough to fund recreational submarines were killed it's likely the family would have come forward by now.

what evidence though? none has been produced.

Evidence for example of visual surveillance of submarines (sister comment reply) in form that are usually used as narco submarines, with no victim coming forward for their rarer occasional use (tourism or science).

Someone has pointed out gold, people smugglers, and fisherman could be explanations but I don't think such submarine is suitable for much but the gold smuggling case there.

It is suspicious, that is all. Most time these form of submarine are used, it is to transport narcotics. Coast Guard has boarded many of them, this almost always the case.

Is it proof they are guilty beyond reasonable doubt? No

Do I think they deserve to die based on evidence? No

Hell, I'm not arguing we should even do anything about it.

If my cousin Niko was spotted on one, I would have questions, because it's suspicious. I wouldn't conclude he needs executed.

board the vessels, arrest the sailors, produce the drugs. that’s the just way. this is just a prelude to invasion and/or regime change so US capital can grab the oil. (I assume you agree based on your comment)

> Enough evidence to be suspicious.

How do you know that? They haven't released any evidence. I don't think they've shared any with Congress.

This is basically you re-iterating that you don't find narco-submarine type vessels as suspicious for drug trafficking. Because I have already posted the video[], but rather than anyone respond to that they just ignore it.

I'm not going to argue you're wrong. Suspicious is subjective, and possibly even semantic. However, such vessels of this form are mostly used for drug trafficking, and occasionally for tourism or science. But we've heard nothing but crickets in regards to families of scientists or tourists. I'm left suspicious it was probably a narco submarine, which as I've repeated several times, in no way is trying to justify execution or even state I know for sure what the narco-submarine appearing vessel was.

[] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790330

Ok, so that's one boat. I imagine that case likely had drugs. How about the other dozen or so?

And it sounds like you mostly agree, but to me being in a kind of vehicle that often has drugs on board isn't enough reason to me to be murdered.

They're not being murdered because they have drugs.

They're being murdered because they're likely to be perceived as an unsympathetic target and a way to escalate hostilities with Venezuela.

No one in the know could possibly think pot shots at a few vessels has any meaningful impact on the drug trade.

Would be simple thing I think for the world's greatest military to capture the vessels and take the occupants alive. Besides being great PR when you reveal the drug haul on the deck of a US ship and show the rap sheet of the smugglers you could probably get a good deal of intel as well.

Guess it would depend on your definition of simple.

IIRC at least one of the targetted vessels were in Venezuelan waters.

Venezuela has F-16 and Su-30.

No matter how prepared US is, it's not necessarily a sure thing they could pull that off without death of US personnel. US personnel that had to actually go on the ground were routinely killed in Afghanistan despite absolute force and technology superiority.

The conservative argument I've seen is basically it needs to just blow them up from above because in such case US forces are not risked. While I don't agree with the mission, the strategy makes sense.

This has practically nothing to do with fentanyl. Practically none of the US supply of fentanyl comes from Venezuela. Other drugs, sure. Not really fentanyl.

If the Cheeto in Chief declared war on salad forks, all salad forks are now illegal in the US, death penalty for all those trafficking in salad forks, it'll help stop fentanyl trust me, would you also be for it? After all, it's doing something, and we need to do something. Or would you see it as something unrelated and would make no impact while making most people less safe?

> No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.

Do you not find that incredibly troubling though? That the US government is gearing up to go to war against a country and yet the populace isn't being read in on the slightest in whatever evidence they may have that these boats they're bombing are actually drug boats or that Venezuela actually is a primary source for fentanyl or whatever? Isn't that an immensely troubling thing that we should push back on until they actually tell us good reasons to go to war?

Seems like the problem was the US medical industry getting everyone hooked on opiates. The US even prescribes fentanyl for injuries, a temporary problem, and gets people addicted to the strongest stuff in the world for life.

But maybe the hospitals and American drug corps are all covert Venezuelan operations. Probably not, though. This makes as much sense as invading Iraq for a terrorist attack carried out by a rich Saudi Arabian family.

You thinking killing some random people thousands of miles away is some sort of step in the right direction is honestly just sad. Imagine Botswana having a problem with lion attacks and their president kills your family on the other side of the earth because the people of Botswana want the president to do something, and killing someone, doesn't matter where, is progress towards a solution. I'm an American, but it's stuff like this that makes me realize that hundreds of years from now, people will hold the US's government and its people in the same regard as King Leopold and colonial Belgians.

I only see two practical answers to the fentanyl crisis. Legalize it, or total war against the suppliers.

Which one you pick will largely come down to personal morals or ethics.

The addictive properties of the drug and profits seem to make the responses of more mellow legal incentives -- inelastic. The addict does not give a shit he may go to jail. The high-level supplier does not care he might be risking life, when he is making a gazillion dollars and plans to go out shooting anyway. The low level suppliers, well they fall under the same problem as the 'addict' bucket because you can get as many as you need from that one, no matter the consequences.

A 100% on the total war must also go after users not just suppliers. Otherwise you’re just making the market more profitable for the remaining suppliers. It’s really hard to stop things that are immensely profitable.

If the rate of murder exceeds the rate of entrants for any meaningful number of suppliers, that might not be the case for the purposes of mitigation (which to be clear, is all you're going to get, never eradication). However, what you say may be true, I only cannot say it with certainty.

You would probably kill more people that way rather than making it a death penalty for use. The other problem is enterprises that make money like this can easily corrupt the police and politicians. Since users don’t make money from using they’re not able to pay off the police.

Any solution that is predicated on uncorruptable police and politicians is not going to work. I wish we didn’t have such corrupted police and politicians so we could have nicer policies but we don’t so we can’t.

Legalizing it is also a total war against the suppliers in most cases (just economically instead of with guns). By legalizing, you usually replace the current suppliers with ones you like.

1. We must do something! (moral panic)

2. Does something

3. Un(intended) consequences of doing something (problem is now worse or different)

4. Back to number 1

No one thinks cartels use fishing boats to transport drugs, especially launching from Venezuela. Venezuela itself only have minor cartels. Target Zodiacs from DR, Jamaica, Haiti or Sinaloa, you'll get a better ROI.

Venezuela network traffic Venezuelian first (some of which you probably killed, not unexpected from a bloodthirsty country, but still), gold second, and drugs a far away third.

Killing gold traffickers probably help Brazil and France, while most Venezuelian drug is probably still headed to Europe through Dutch vessels.

> This is something

I'm sorry that you're being swayed by propaganda as this isn't solving anything and will most likely make it worse.

Is it possible that this something isn’t even about drugs? The administration has signaled aggression and potential military action in the Western hemisphere since I think before the term even started. It almost feels indiscriminate at this point since it started with friends and allies, and now moves to a focus with a more plausible cover of legitimacy.

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-Intern...

The state dept report from 2025 found that fentanyl basically only comes to the US through Mexico and Venezuela is not a major player.

I find your point 5 to be particularly anti-democratic to be honest, we don’t know because Trump doesn’t think us nor Congress need to know beyond some tweets on Truth Social.

I am sorry for your loss, I have some friends who passed the same way, and it is horrible.

> The president has something to offer as a solution. For everything.

Unfortunately it is not a coincidence that the solution to all problems is always (a) make a loud noise (b) take your stuff (c) take away your ability to object to taking your stuff. Amoral sadistic narcissist gonna amoral sadistic narcissist. If you think you don't have enough information to predict how that's going to play out as far as family members you care about, ok.

> 2. We have got to do something

That's a mistake. We need to do something with good results. Doing something with bad results is worse than doing nothing.

> Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance.

You're accusing random people of bias - you don't even know who they are. It's a way to shut down discussion and reason.

Whether or not it's good and useful doesn't depend on bias, but on reality. We can talk about reality here, without shutting each other down.

From what I understand, fentanyl doesn't come by boat, and few drugs do.

> 5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.

If that's true, it's a major problem in democracy, where the people have sovereignty. Their elected representatives in Congress decide on wars, not the White House.

>2. We have got to do something

>3. This is something

Killing random people extrajudicially is not "doing something".

You could use your argument to justify the Holocaust...

you’re misinformed. this is not about fentanyl. venezuela didn’t export that.

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