Believing is Seeing

I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight. The first strike, the second strike, and the third and fourth strike on September 2 were entirely lawful and needful and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do.
Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)
Pentagon leaders brief lawmakers on U.S. boat strikes, fueling debate over legality

I understand Senator Cotton's viewpoint on this. The Trump Administration has to be in the right, and so his perception of events has to align with that, even if, to an observer, it doesn't seem to make much sense. The original video of the September 2nd strike against an alleged group of drug smugglers shows a small boat, but still fairly large for two people in the water to manage, that doesn't have any obvious weapons on it. What fight were they attempting to stay in? One with a naval force that could strike them at will and that was invulnerable to anything they may have done in reprisal?

This is part of the problem with modern politics. Senator Cotton's statements seem more driven by partisanship and/or loyalty to the President than anything else.

In what seems like yet another in a long series of misguided efforts to prosecute the War on Drugs by going after the supply of narcotics, the Trump Administration has declared open season on boats that it determines have drugs aboard. Why anyone things that a tactic that has failed time and again will suddenly start working now is beyond me. But a lot of the reaction to it is necessarily partisan. Republicans have to line up behind the policy and Democrats have to be vocal in their opposition to it, independently of its merits. And this means the "debate" over the legality of what certainly carries at least the appearance of extrajudicial murder, is really just another political shouting match, the outcome of which is more closely tied to the President's approval ratings than to the actual events that are supposedly under consideration.

And at the bottom of it all is the public, and its various factions.

As long as the Trumpist corps of voters understand the drug trade to be a hateful scheme to victimize them, being perpetrated by South Americans who unjustly resent them, they're likely to be more or less in favor of the strikes. And the members of Congress who rely on their votes, like Senator Cotton, are going to have to mirror their viewpoint back to them, or be replaced by someone who will. Likewise, as long as Democratic voters understand this to be a racist persecution of poor people in Latin America, their members on Congress are going to have to speak out against it. And as long as each faction views the other's viewpoint as proof of their wrong thinking, the conflict will persist.