U.S. Airstrike Kills Two in Pacific as Drug War Operations Intensify

Two boat crew members killed; over 200 deaths accumulated in 10 months of US military operations against suspected drug-trafficking vessels.

In the waters of the Pacific and Caribbean, the United States military has now killed more than 200 people over ten months in a campaign called Operation Southern Lance — striking boats suspected of carrying drugs at a pace of three attacks per week. The operation raises one of the oldest tensions in the exercise of state power: the distance between declared necessity and verifiable truth. When force is applied at scale, in secret, without independent witness, the question of whether justice is being served or merely performed becomes impossible to answer — and perhaps, for those conducting th

U.S. Airstrike Kills Two in Pacific as Drug War Operations Intensify

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