RE: As far killing the innocent goes, just about any law enforcement exercise also carries with it the prospect of killing the innocent
I’m sorry, but That argument — while superficially pragmatic — fails morally, legally, and strategically when applied to the deliberate destruction of suspected vessels without due process.
Yes, law enforcement carries risk, but that risk is mitigated by strict rules: proportionality, necessity, accountability, and due process. This is NOT like Israel in Gaza fighting a war of survival and trying to rescue hostages ( there are no hostages here ).
Accidental harm during a war is not the same as preemptively destroying a vessel based on suspicion. One is a tragic byproduct of restraint; the other is a deliberate act without judicial oversight.
There is no equivalence. Killing with intent based on incomplete evidence is not morally equivalent to accidental harm during a war.
There's jus ad bellum and jus in bello. As others in this thread have noted, this is a form of hybrid warfare being waged against the US, to which I added that the scope of the smuggling goes far beyond what can be handled by the judicial system. That gives us jus ad bellum.
So if this is warfare, and not law enforcement, jus in bello doesn't require asking for surrender in order to take prisoners. And in this operation as in others, I would have assume that our military is doing what it can to discriminate combatants from non-combatants and that these really are drug boats and not fishermen. That's sufficient for me.