Eleven Souls

Precision Sold Separately

One of the strangest political tricks of the last decade has been watching people who claim to worship personal responsibility suddenly lose interest in details the moment a military operation goes sideways.

We’re now learning that more than 60 U.S. military attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific reportedly resulted in over 200 extrajudicial killings. Most of the targeted boats carried only a handful of people. One attack stood apart from all the others. On September 2, 2025, a vessel carrying 11 people was struck.

Eleven.

Government officials reportedly noticed the number immediately. Drug smuggling operations generally don’t load boats with unnecessary personnel. Extra bodies increase costs, increase risk, and increase the chances that somebody talks.

So why were there 11 people aboard?

According to reports from classified briefings, a senior military officer later acknowledged that some of those killed in these operations may have been victims of human trafficking.

That possibility transforms the story.

A trafficking victim isn’t a cartel executive. A trafficking victim isn’t a criminal mastermind plotting international narcotics strategy from the captain’s chair. A trafficking victim is often someone trapped, coerced, threatened, or transported against their will.

If that’s who ended up in the crosshairs, then the conversation changes dramatically.

For years we’ve been sold a Hollywood version of modern warfare. The sales pitch is always the same. Smart weapons. Smart intelligence. Smart targeting. Everything smart except, apparently, the decision-making process.

The public is repeatedly assured that military surveillance can identify extraordinary details from enormous distances. Yet after more than 200 deaths, we’re still hearing questions about who was actually on some of these boats.

As a progressive, I find it remarkable how often the loudest advocates of law and order become surprisingly relaxed about due process when the victims are far away and unlikely to appear on cable news. Suddenly certainty becomes optional. Verification becomes a luxury item.

Adults should be capable of holding two thoughts at the same time. Drug trafficking is a serious problem. Killing innocent people is also a serious problem. Neither truth cancels the other.

Congress should demand answers. The Pentagon should provide them. The public deserves more than carefully worded statements and classified shrugs.

Every casualty figure represents a human being who had a name, a family, and a story. That’s true whether the death occurs in Kansas, Caracas, or on a boat drifting across open water.

The issue isn’t ideology. It’s accountability.

Before a government exercises the power to kill, it should know exactly who it is killing.

That standard shouldn’t be controversial. It should be automatic.