‘Civilized People Don’t Do This!’ Rand Paul Torches Trump’s ‘Insane’ Strikes on Alleged Drug Boats

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted President Donald Trump’s overseas strikes on alleged drug boats “insane” and not something “civilized people” do.

Paul joined Glenn Greenwald on the System Update podcast where he called out Trump and his Republican colleagues over US strikes against alleged drug boats in South American waters.

Paul accused Republicans of supporting actions they would be up in arms over if a Democrat were in office. The senator argued the strikes include no due process and could be leading to the death of innocent people.

The problem with this, and one of the most damning statistics, is that when the Coast Guard boards ships or boats off of Miami or off the California coast, about 25% of the boats that are suspected of having drugs don’t. So if you have a 25% error rate, people have to decide, well, do you think killing people with a 25% error rate is okay? So we have never done it this way,” Paul said.

Trump has defended his strikes, claiming that they are targeting drug boats run by gangs that are headed to the United States. Experts, however, have raised questions about the legality of these strikes.

Paul accused Trump of making a “circular argument” in justifying the strikes by calling the targets terrorists but never having to justify why.

“It’s this circular argument. Who are terrorists? Well, the people I tell you who are terrorists. And what are terrorists? They’re people who kill people in a terroristic way, and they’re terrorists because I tell you they do this. It’s like a it’s a circular argument with no proof presented,” he said.

Paul argued there “is so much insane about this policy” and he questioned his colleagues celebrating these deaths.

He said:

I guess what gets me about my colleagues is they seem to think that these people are less than human. They’re not even deserving of the respect of animals. Just kill them. And it’s sort of this laughing, sort of ha ha ha, you know, these were really bad people. What gets to me is that, well, what if you’re wrong? Or what if it turns out this fisherman’s, you know, sister or wife has been kidnapped and they’re being tortured at the hands of the cartel or whatever and he’s told to make a drug run or they’re gonna kill his sister. That is a very possible scenario. Or what if he’s just dirt poor, down on his luck, has failed making his rent for five months, he’s getting ready to be homeless, or he takes his last-ditch job, which pays very well but has some danger to it, is that deserving of death?

Paul called the strikes uncivilized and laid out a scenario for his colleagues while questioning Trump’s claim that these boats are a direct threat to the country.

The senator said:

It’s like if someone broke into your house, you were assaulted, and you find out three weeks later that he lives two roads over and is in a certain house, and you don’t call the police, you go over there with a missile and you blow up his house. But what if you got the wrong house? What if you transposed the numbers on the address? We don’t do that. Civilized people don’t this. And it’s not going to stop the drugs. They’ll go a different route. And we got to get away from the ridiculous nature or notion that these boats are coming to America. Oh, we’ve got to self-defend against these boats coming to American. These boats can’t go more than about 100 miles without filling up for gas. They’re 2,000 miles away from our coast.

Watch above via System Update.