The US military attacked and stole a Venezuelan oil tanker today. This is piracy.

Pacifists and others who oppose the indiscriminate use of violence are often accused of being naive. There’s some truth to this accusation; I know when I was younger that I oversimplified the complexity of warfare and national defense. It was all too easy to see unjust use of force and label everyone involved “the bad guys.”

I eventually came to realize that most people involved in using violence in unjust ways would disagree with me about how just their actions were. It’s obvious to me that invading foreign countries is unjust in nearly all circumstances, but that doesn’t make it obvious to the invader.

I don’t know exactly where lines can be drawn, but I do know when they’ve been crossed over. Attacking and stealing an oil tanker from a country that you aren’t at war with crosses that line. If you don’t see this as unjust, it’s because you’re indifferent, or stupid. That means the specific people who rappelled with weapons onto that tanker are either 1) knowingly doing something wrong, 2) indifferent to the morality of their actions, or 3) easily mislead (stupid). None of those are the people I want to be armed and representing the US.

Pirates are the bad guys.