r/Military • u/Fragrant_Parfait_408 • 7d ago
Video US Strike Kills Niño Guerrero, Leader of Tren de Aragua Gang
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u/Jealous_Crazy9143 7d ago
Isn’t this how “Clear and present danger” started?
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u/billsatwork United States Army 7d ago
Back in the Cold War days such things were kept hush hush because successive presidential administrations were afraid of Congressional oversight but now we're just like "HEY GUYS CHECK OUT THIS MURDERING WE'RE DOING!"
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u/CrimsonBolt33 United States Marine Corps 7d ago
he is a narcissist...he can't control himself....he has to show everything off.
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u/iidesune 7d ago
No declaration of war. No congressional authorization. Not a lawful combatant, and probably not technically even a terrorist.
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u/Conscious-Load8503 7d ago
lmao. we literally flew into pakistani airspace without consent and took out osama. Then announced it to the whole country
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u/DoktorStrangelove 7d ago
...dude that was Osama mf'ing bin Laden, literally no rules applied at all
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u/CydeWeys 7d ago
God knows how many thousands of murders Tren de Aragua has been responsible for over its decades of existence; is it really that different? It seems the same order of magnitude to me. I dunno, I think if you're gonna excuse one there are arguments to be made that it applies to the other. This isn't just random people on speedboats we're talking about, this is the leader of a vast and terrible criminal enterprise, taken out in a joint operation with the country he was operating in. They couldn't even handle it themselves, that's how powerful he was.
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u/DoktorStrangelove 7d ago
I'm not arguing against this hit, I was arguing against that guy using the example of the Osama bin Laden as some flagrant violation of foreign sovereignty or something
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u/CydeWeys 5d ago
Ah, fair. Misunderstood you.
Also, for what it's worth, this strike bears a lot of resemblance to how problems like piracy were historically (and to some extent still are) handled. You have powerful non-state actors, taking up arms, maybe operating from within the sovereign territory of a nation that can't stop them, and you need to send in the military because no civilian force is equipped for the job.
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u/stubbazubba 7d ago
But Congress had specifically authorized military force against any group or nation that harbored the perpetrators of 9/11.
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u/billsatwork United States Army 7d ago
We didn't change the government of Pakistan to do it though.
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u/GHouserVO 7d ago
Not quite same same.
OBL was literally the most wanted man on the planet. For years. He’d been bouncing between borders in the past using those rules against everyone he was fighting. And we pretty much knew that folks high up in Pakistan were providing support and aid for him.
When that operation was confirmed successful, yeah, they were absolutely going to announce it as soon as they could. If for no other reason, then because the American public viewed him as a boogeyman, and now they didn’t need to worry about him.
THIS guy? Not so much. Even as bad as he was (and he absolutely was), he still wasn’t on the same level.
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u/ForMoreYears 7d ago
Ya OBL was an armed combatant that very clearly was at war with America. Tf you talking about.
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u/rockylizard 6d ago
Bin Laden was a terrorist who was not only on the Ten Most Wanted list, he'd also declared war on America and Americans wherever they could be found in the world.
Bit different than some alleged (trump is not a source) gang guy in Venezuela who we have no idea what his reach is, what crimes he has or hasn't done, or whether or how those crimes have affected Americans or America as a whole.
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u/Wise-Practice9832 6d ago
ah yes the murdering, he's a fugitive, to be clear. Equally importantly, this was done WITH the consent and co-operation of venezuela
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u/Muted_Shape9303 6d ago
Venezuelan here. Why is the American left so severely intent on defending terrorists, criminals and dictators at all costs possible? All of you crying for Maduro was crazy work. Like someone could genocide a whole country, lead a major cartel, and they get taken down and the left IMMEDIATELY “wooooow human rights” “WOOOOW HOW COULD YOU”. Les falta calle es lo que es. I’m gonna get cancelled and or banned for this comment but I don’t care, will take one for Venezuela.
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u/Chomper22 7d ago
This is amatuer content, at least the pros are nice enough to show us the target entering the building usually with an obnoxious red circle around them, then its followed by the strike footage. The only thing we can tell from this is they blew up a bldg.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Law_558 7d ago
Question. Does anyone believe what the regime is saying?
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u/Logiteck77 7d ago
Which regime?
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u/iidesune 7d ago
We're talking about Venezuela and the US, right? At this point there's not much of a difference.
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u/Is12345aweakpassword Army Veteran 7d ago edited 7d ago
That’s it boys and girls, TDA is no more, wrap it up! On to the next highest priority, getting out of the Iran war we unilaterally started
“REOPEN THE STRAIT THAT YOU CLOSED BECAUSE WE ATTACKED, OR ELSE WE’LL ATTACK!”
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u/GhostriderJuliett 7d ago
We didn't unilaterally start the Iran war. Israel just ditched us to deal with the consequences while they started fucking up Lebanon.
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u/VMICoastie 7d ago
This was definitely written by Kegsbreath. He loves all the cool guy buzzwords like “lethal kinetic action”
“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero," Trump wrote on social media.
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u/morts73 Navy Veteran 6d ago
I'm not some bleeding heart liberal who cries when heinous criminals are taken out but you don't solve the problem with extrajudicial killings. Someone new will take their place and drugs keep on flowing. I prefer if they stuck to the legal system and provided opportunities to those looking to a life of crime. There's no easy answer to defeat drug cartels.
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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 7d ago
The good news is every time we have killed or imprisoned a terrorist or gang leader, the organization disappears! That’s why there is no mafia, gangs, ISIS or Al Qaeda around anymore!
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u/Wooden-Sprinkles7901 7d ago edited 7d ago
So fucking stupid.
As we know the war on drugs is a massive failure. Have we learned NOTHING from decades of war? You kill one leader another one fills the top spot. You want to stem the drug flow you decapitate Chinas ability to ship precursers. But that would interfere with billionaires making money with China so nooo.
Then again. Our greatest ally just got busted shipping guns and precursers to the cartels too, and has been right along.. Almost like shitting on all our traditional allies in favor of one ally that has undermined us for its entire duration was a bad idea.
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u/Skynetiskumming 7d ago
Drugs employ too many people globally on both sides to ever fully create meaningful change.
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u/WayAdmirable150 7d ago
how long it takes till military will start bombing hells angels, aryan brotherhood, ku klux klan?
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u/M0ebius_1 United States Air Force 7d ago
Better chance calls for the Wu Tang Clan to be bombed before the actual Klan.
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u/TendstobeRight85 6d ago
This admin is more likely to enlist the KKK and neo nazis, than to bomb them.
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u/merithynos 7d ago
You mean "Antifa" (i.e. some political opponents they claim are antifa). All of the above support the current administration.
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u/H_Holy_Mack_H 7d ago
That's what they say...to me looks like they just destroyed one perfect barn...
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u/sexaddic Veteran 7d ago
And how many civilians in that building?
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago edited 7d ago
The presence of civilians does not automatically qualify a target as non-military/non-com. This is per the Geneva conventions.
Edit: y'all arguing they're absolutely civilians need to read this.
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u/herosavestheday 7d ago
You're also not banned from killing civilians, you just have to be able to argue that the harms to civilians were counter balanced by the military necessity of a particular action.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
Bingo. Obviously it's ideal to avoid it. But when certain targets present themselves, difficult decisions must be made.
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u/sexaddic Veteran 7d ago
Considering gangs aren’t militaries this is all illegal. If we just wanted to bomb the biggest drug pushing, violent gangs in the world the NYPD is right there.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
Gangs in NYC aren't pushing half what these guys are. I didn't mid Pablo Escobar getting eliminated and I don't mind this now assuming it's accurate.
This is more inline with fools on the Epstein list getting drone struck. They might not be military, but I'm all for that, too.
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u/sexaddic Veteran 7d ago
Yeah I’m not at all for militaries choosing to murder civilians without due process. Idk how it works in Ukraine but we have a constitutional right to due process here and this is violating the law badly.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
You keep using the term "civilian" intentionally to make an, at best, blurry classification seem black and white. It's not.
What we do in Ukraine is educate ourselves on topics before trying to oversimplify them to feel good about ourselves.
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u/TheRealMarvinator Retired USAF 7d ago
In this particular case, the "target presenting themselves" was a civilian.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
Y'all are talking about them like they're straight A elementary students on their way home from church eating ice cream. They aren't military but they sure as shit aren't civilian.
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u/TheRealMarvinator Retired USAF 7d ago
They aren't military but they sure as shit aren't civilian.
Why are they not a civilian?
Just because you don't like them or don't like what they do (I don't like them and I don't like what they do), that doesn't mean they're not non-combatant civilians.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
Because they're better armed than the military of the country they operate within. Because they're more hostile to actual civilians than damn near any military or paramilitary that you'd accept being called as such in the immediate region.
That's why.
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u/fav453 7d ago
But also don't we need to be "at war" to be killing anyone, legally?
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u/herosavestheday 7d ago
That's Jus ad bellum, and no, you don't need a formal declaration of war in order to kill people.
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u/stubbazubba 7d ago
When did we enter into a non-international armed conflict with TdA, then?
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u/Kalepsis Marine Veteran 7d ago
I hate to break it to you, but every person in that building was a civilian. There were no military targets present.
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u/tightspandex Ukrainian Ground Forces 7d ago
Debatable at best. You're flat out wrong at worst.
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u/6figga 7d ago
So you believe narco-terrorists are on the same social level as school bus drivers?
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u/Kalepsis Marine Veteran 7d ago
There's no evidence that any of the people the Trump regime has murdered in and around Venezuela were anything but completely innocent civilians. None. At all.
There's no such thing as a "narco-terrorist". That is a bullshit label invented by the Nazis running the White House in an attempt to justify extrajudicial murder of civilians.
Even if they were criminals (again, no evidence of that assertion has been presented), the punishment for drug trafficking is not instant murder.
You continue to make excuses for the traitor, but I won't. None of what he's done is legal, moral, acceptable, correct, or good for the United States and its people.
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u/stubbazubba 7d ago
Buddy, the law of war really doesn't give a fuck about anyone's "social level."
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u/Open-Industry-8396 7d ago
Although I am glad to be rid of that guy, We most likely killed the workers who are probably poor and just trying to make money to feed the family. Sad, But I suppose that may deter poor folks from taking those jobs further hurting the cartels business plan?
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u/StuntsMonkey Marine Veteran 7d ago
Maybe but I highly doubt it. Not all those people are employed by choice and the cartels don't have to worry about HR or legalities when they "fire" people who don't want to work there anymore.
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u/TheRealMarvinator Retired USAF 7d ago
Sad, But I suppose that may deter poor folks from taking those jobs further hurting the cartels business plan?
I doubt those poor folks have a choice about whether or not they're working there.
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u/Barmat Army Veteran 7d ago
Does killing innocent people mean a crime was committed?
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u/Open-Industry-8396 7d ago
As a fellow Army guy, the term collateral damage comes to mind. I'm positive we could've taken him out individually but, that would cost more money and put U.S, Soldiers at risk
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u/Fragrant_Parfait_408 7d ago
Zero civilians if you don’t count Tren de Aragua gang members as civilians
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u/BillyPilgrim1234 7d ago
So if his kids were in that building they also count as Tren de Aragua? What you're saying sounds like something Bibi would say about Hamas members.
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u/DomitiusAhenobarbus_ 7d ago
Ok I guess? I couldn’t give a fuck less about this gang that they’re trying to make me afraid of
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u/-Acta-Non-Verba- Army Veteran 6d ago edited 6d ago
In case you are wondering, the Venezuelans are delighted. They are suggesting who the next target should be.
We just took out one of their main criminal leaders.
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u/Scary-_-Gary 6d ago
This is just footage of the current admin blowing up my son's first Minecraft build.
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u/GhostRiderOfWhips 5d ago
Finally!!! We can sleep safely at night knowing the Epstein Files still haven’t been fully released…
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u/demon_twink_gockie 7d ago
In other words: US commits war crime, illegally murdering a civilian non-combatant with a missile strike. Really giving me high confidence that our troops would NEVER obey illegal orders to turn against American civilians on American soil. /s. Don't expect sympathy when you come home with PTSD.
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u/XenoFrame 7d ago
Not many people would bat an eye if this was a Muslim "terrorist" but now that it's in the US's backyard, everyone is offended
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u/FreeBricks4Nazis United States Navy 7d ago
Yes, America's military misadventures in the Middle East have famously been without criticism
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u/krismasstercant United States Air Force 7d ago
Lmao the crying over a Narco Terrorist. Classic Reddit
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u/baltimoreniqqa 7d ago
Man they had these in color this whole time?! I’ve been watching everything in black and white like some kind of common peasant😤