If you think a 3 motor boat has 11 people in it, plus any considerable amount of drugs and enough gas for 1500 miles open water trek, I have a bunch of bridges to sell you.
Pyrrhic would be if we had expended too many resources to accomplish it again. At worst you could say this is a token victory, but I care much more about the optics and implications of the White House publicly posting footage of military intervention against cartel drug smuggling on Twitter than I do about whether this specific incident is a massive bust or “merely” one shot. We all know military intervention exactly like this, along with the implied message of “we will fucking explode you, even if you think you’re just one boat beneath our notice”—and in this sense, it may actually be better and more effective that this is “just” one small boat—is the only thing that can really stop the flood of drugs and migrants, and yet it would have been unthinkable even just a year ago that we’d actually deploy the military to do this.
This is a fantastic thing to see, and one has to twist themselves into silly knots of doomerism to not appreciate it. Don’t bitch about an objectively positive action just because it is the beginning and not the finale.
but I care much more about the optics and implications of the White House publicly posting footage
This is likely the intent too. We are at like 3x the self-deportations than direct ones as a result of the optics and fear the White House has been pumping out about it, so this is likely another continuation of that successful tactic.
If you think a 3 motor boat has 11 people in it, plus any considerable amount of drugs and enough gas for 1500 miles open water trek, I have a bunch of bridges to sell you.
They don't have to. The main drug routes out of Venezuela go through Haiti and Honduras. A couple hundred miles each way.
Venezuela isn't even the biggest player. Most of the volume moves on the Pacific side. The main obstacle is the Darien Gap.
So, pyrrhic victory then?
Pyrrhic would be if we had expended too many resources to accomplish it again. At worst you could say this is a token victory, but I care much more about the optics and implications of the White House publicly posting footage of military intervention against cartel drug smuggling on Twitter than I do about whether this specific incident is a massive bust or “merely” one shot. We all know military intervention exactly like this, along with the implied message of “we will fucking explode you, even if you think you’re just one boat beneath our notice”—and in this sense, it may actually be better and more effective that this is “just” one small boat—is the only thing that can really stop the flood of drugs and migrants, and yet it would have been unthinkable even just a year ago that we’d actually deploy the military to do this.
This is a fantastic thing to see, and one has to twist themselves into silly knots of doomerism to not appreciate it. Don’t bitch about an objectively positive action just because it is the beginning and not the finale.
This is likely the intent too. We are at like 3x the self-deportations than direct ones as a result of the optics and fear the White House has been pumping out about it, so this is likely another continuation of that successful tactic.
How much does that missile cost? And how much per hour is the operation of the ship that fired it?
All people killed were real narco-terrorist?
They are fixing the supply problem, what about the demand?
Probably only had to go a couple hundred miles and transfer the drugs.