Restraint!
By 
President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering an innocent fisherman in an attack on a boat American authorities claimed was carrying illicit drugs, prompting President Trump to declare on Sunday that he would slash assistance to Colombia, one of Washington’s top aid recipients in Latin America.
The feuding between the two leaders reflected rising tensions in the region over the huge U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean targeting Colombia’s neighbor, Venezuela. U.S. forces have killed dozens of people in recent weeks aboard vessels that the Trump administration says were ferrying drugs from Venezuela.
The administration has provided no evidence to support the claims beyond descriptions of intelligence assessments and declassified videos of portions of the attacks. Legal specialists have called such killings illegal, because militaries cannot lawfully target civilians who do not pose a threat in the moment and are not directly participating in hostilities.
“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Mr. Petro wrote on social media. He said the man killed in the mid-September attack, Alejandro Carranza, was a “lifelong fisherman” whose boat had experienced damage and was adrift, probably in Colombian waters, at the time of the attack. His description of Mr. Carranza and his boat could not be immediately confirmed.
Mr. Trump responded by accusing Mr. Petro of not doing enough to curb the production of illegal drugs, calling him an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.” Mr. Trump also said that the United States would halt aid payments to Colombia, which has long ranked among the largest
Unlike Venezuela, Colombia of course IS a major producer of narcotics. Typically the way to interdict the shipment of narcotics is to work in tandem with the governments of the countries that produce the narcotics and that control shipping routes that enable such trade.
President Trump has different ideas. Possibly murdering every fisherman who dares to ply his trade in the Western hemisphere will do the trick?
By Departamento Nacional de Planeación – Foto Oficial Presidente Gustavo Petro, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=172592321