LOS ANGELES (OC).–However many Americans die of drug overdoses yearly, it’s no excuse for the White House to bomb boats in the Caribbean suspected or transporting drugs to the United States. There’s a big difference between the rules of war and the drug war that isn’t a war at all but a metaphor for trying to stop drugs from entering the U.S. and discourage users from indulging in illegal drugs. When it comes to the drug war, it doesn’t give the Pentagon license to engage in extrajudicial killings of suspected narco-traffickers. Trump’s White House has taken the symbolic drug war literally, giving him license to use the military to attack boats suspected of naro=trafficking. Trump claims that in the past interdicting narco-trafficking boats was difficult because they’re too fast for the U.S. Coast Guard. But whatever the reasons, there’s a big difference between the war on drugs and war itself.
Trump blames Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for accepting a policy that allows drugs to flow openly into the United States. “We’re not going to let our country be ruined because other countries want to drop their worst [here],” Trump said. Trump responded to a question about whether he would use the CIA to target the Niclolas Maduro regime. “And we’re not going to take it,” Trump said, claiming that it’s the officials policy of the Maduro government to engage in drug trafficking. Trump confirmed that he’s following up with a highly dubious policy to bomb boats suspected of narco-trafficking. “We are certainly looking at land nw, because we’ve got the sea well under control,” Trump said referring to the Pentagon shooting down boats suspected to carrying drugs. Whether boats carry drugs or not, does that mean they’re attacking the U.S.?
Any attempt by Trump to start hitting targets on Venezuelan soil would trigger a mutual defense treaty with the Russian Federation. Does Trump want to go to war with the Kremlin because he thinks that Venezuelan drugs kill American citizens by flooding drugs into the country? Don’t American citizens that buy-and-use drugs do so with their own free will? Does Trump really think that selling drugs in the United States is equivalent of committing violent acts on American citizens? When it comes to the drug war, it’s also been a symbolic expression, not to be taken as a literal war. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questions Trump’s legal rationale for targeting any boat for drug trafficking, knowing that Americans citizens make their own choices when it comes to using drugs. Declaring the drug war an armed conflict doesn’t give Trump the legal right to target boats carrying drugs.
White House lawyers have sent to Congress their legal rationale for firing on civilians vessels suspected of carrying illegal drugs at sea. Trump officials say that drug cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States”—forcing the U.S. to fight back in a formal “armed combat.” Trump legal rationale is more twisted than a Philadelphia pretzel, claiming that ferrying drugs represents an attack on the United States. If that’s not a perverted definition of the war on drugs then what is? Drug traffickers simply sell drugs to willing customers, don’t shoot at them with live bullets. Trump wants a judge to buy a flimsy legal argument that collateral damage from drug use is the same as pulling a trigger with an armed weapon. Trump’s lawyers need to go back to the drawing board and figure on the differences in the war on drugs.
Trump announced on Truth Social that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel” off the coast of Venezuela suspected of carrying illicit drugs in international waters. “Intelligene confirmed that the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks, and was transiting along a known” route used by drug smugglers. “Sic male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. forces were harmed. Thank you for you’re your attention to this matter!!!!” Trump said. Trump has admitted that the White House has been engaged in assassinations of civilians violating maritime law on the high seas. Whether carrying drugs or arms, if there’s no direct attack then nothing justified military strikes. Trump’s targeted strikes on vessels suspected of carrying narcotics do not constitute ground for murder.
Trump’s policy to equating drug traffickers with enemy combatants has no legal rationale in any domestic or international law. Whether or Trump thinks that narco-traffikers are indirectly killing American citizens, they’re not directly attacking them with military-strikes. There’s a big difference between a symbolic war like the war on drugs and actual enemy combat. American citizens who choose by buy, use or sell drugs don’t think they’re killing innocent citizens, only carrying out a demand in the society for illegal abused drugs. “About 25% of the time, the boat that they [Coast Guard] board doesn’t have drugs on it. So they have made an error but they don’t kill them,” Paul said Oct. 7. “We’ve blown up four boats now and if the percentages hold true, did one of those four boats not have drug dealers on it,” Paul asked. Trump targeted military strikes are clearly illegal.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlneColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
