Trump deserves credit for acknowledging an obvious reality: The United States is at war with drug cartels

A declassified image of a U.S. Navy strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean.

I disagree with Donald Trump on plenty of issues, but I’m fully on board (pardon the pun) with the recent strikes he has ordered on narco boats operating in the Caribbean. Heroin, fentanyl, synthetic meth and, to a lesser extent, cocaine have killed more than 850,000 Americans in just the last decade, and tens of thousands more prior to that. For perspective, that’s more Americans than died combined in every single war the United States has fought. Drug addiction has destroyed millions more families, lives and careers. The drug trade upends entire neighborhoods, even entire cities. The vast majority of this poison is imported by cartels, gangs and terror groups, and the vast majority flows across the southern border or via the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2023, authorities in the state of California alone seized more than 62,000 pounds of fentanyl. Fun fact: That’s enough of the drug to kill the entire human population — twice. And it’s a fraction of what actually made it into the country and onto the streets.

Let’s be blunt: If you smuggle large volumes of the lethal illegal drugs that have killed nearly a million Americans and permanently destroyed millions of lives in order to make a buck, you deserve to die. This shouldn’t be a contentious statement. We’re not talking about a local dealer selling dime bags (though when it comes to drugs like fentanyl, even that tiny amount can be fatal). We’re talking about the major importers. While the country’s drug crisis has many causes — not least of all permissive social norms and legal regimes that normalize drug use and addiction and contribute to demand — supply is a major factor. For decades, Republican and Democrat administrations alike treated the tsunami of narcotics flowing into the country as a law enforcement problem. Clearly, it no longer is, and has not been for a long time.

In 2024, a single seizure in New York captured enough fentanyl to kill every resident of New York City ten times over. DEA file photo.

Narco boat strikes have killed an estimated 87 pieces of human excrement so far. For perspective, that means that the United States has eliminated one smuggler for roughly every 10,000 innocent people smugglers helped kill. Talk about proportionality.

The laws of war apply

People who oppose the strikes hang their hat on the laws of war. The problem is, like so many areas of law, the books haven’t kept up with reality. War is a constantly evolving — one might say mutating — phenomenon. To take an obvious example, there is broad consensus that 9/11 was an act of war, even though it was carried out by private citizens of a foreign country who acted at their own behest. By the same token, Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was an act of war even though it entirely targeted noncombatant civilians. These and other terror attacks fundamentally changed what we perceive as the nature of war.

Is a massive, decades-long, multibillion dollar series of operations to infiltrate deadly substances into a sovereign country that results in nearly a million deaths collectively an act of war? A very strong case can be made that it is. Indeed, some authorities have referred to fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” and the illegal drug trade as “chemical warfare.” In September 2022, a bipartisan group of 18 state attorneys general sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging his administration to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

Further evidence that we are at war is in the almost entirely ineffective response by traditional law enforcement. Federal, state and local law enforcement, along with the Coast Guard, intercept a small fraction of illegal drugs, probably less than 5%. In other words, the U.S. has been losing an asymmetrical fight for a very, very long time. Suffice it to say, being chased by an unarmed red and white helicopter isn’t much of a deterrent. An MQ-9 Reaper drone deployed from a U.S. Navy destroyer and armed with precision Hellfire missiles is a different story.

Say hello to my little friend….

Likewise, spare the “the smugglers are innocent people forced into smuggling to feed their families.” For example, an estimated 90% of Venezuela’s population of 30 million live below the poverty line (thanks, socialism!). As entrenched as the drug trade has become in that country’s economy the overwhelming majority of its citizens aren’t involved in the drug trade. It’s a choice. Until this administration started sending Hellfire missiles in their direction, working a narco boat was a relatively easy way to make a quick buck. To the extent some of them were in fact forced into it by family or local gangs, the cold reality is that every war claims its share of innocents. A choice between hundreds of thousands of Americans and a few dozen, even a few thousand drug smugglers isn’t a choice.

Democrats and their sycophants in the media also have been howling that there’s no evidence that the boats the Navy has been blowing up were actually carrying drugs. This is akin to arguing that the guy in the purple suit and fedora leaning against his tricked-out Cadillac counting twenties at two in the morning half a block from the street corner where dozens of girls are selling their bodies isn’t a pimp. Sure, it’s possible he isn’t, but you’re on pretty solid ground. It’s possible that guys driving small cargo boats at high speed along known drug trafficking routes under cover of darkness are just out pleasure cruising. It’s also theoretically possible that I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Plus, the Navy, Coast Guard and DEA have evidence, data and observations related to cartel operations going back years.

No doubt just taking in some night air.

As to the controversy over the alleged second strike, or “double tap” attack on two survivors of a first strike in September, Democrats have only themselves to blame. There is well-established precedent for just that sort of follow up attack, thanks to one Barack Hussein Obama. Unlike Trump, whose narco strikes have been limited to maybe a dozen boats over the last six months, as president Obama ordered drone assassinations with what can only be described as gusto. During his eight year presidency he ordered at least 564 drone strikes in eight countries that killed some 3,797 people, including a substantial number of innocent noncombatants and children. Some of the strikes included — wait for it — double tap follow-ups. The first drone strike Obama ordered in Yemen was based on faulty intelligence and resulted in the deaths of at least 21 children, half of whom were under the age of five. According to some estimates, Obama’s drone assassinations killed more civilians than terrorists. Many of those strikes were carried out with far less intelligence to justify them than Trump’s narco boat attacks.

This isn’t “whataboutism,” it’s military and legal precedent.

Ignoring the Obama precedent

Funny, the Rachel Maddows and Chuck Schumers of the world were awfully quiet in the midst of all that carnage. What criticism there was was notably muted and below the radar. There was nothing remotely resembling the unified, daily, even hourly caterwauling of condemnation Trump’s narco boat strikes have received from people like Democratic Senators Jack Reed (D—Rhode Island), Sheldon Whitehouse (D—Rhode Island), Patty Murray (D—Washington), Ron Wydon (D—Oregon), Dick Durbin (D—Illinois), Amy Klobuchar (D—Minnesota) and, of course, the noxious Bernie Sanders (I—Vermont). All of them have called for investigations into Trump’s narco boat attacks. All of them were deafeningly silent during Obama’s eight year killing spree.

How’s that for a double standard? The Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama killed thousands of civilians and children in foreign countries thousands of miles away with impunity. In at least one instance he killed U.S. citizens overseas without anything remotely resembling due process (granted, citizens who’d joined al-Quida). Trump blows up a few dozen scumbags importing deadly poison directly into our country, and he’s declared a war criminal.

Again, I disagree vehemently with Donald Trump on a great many things. But the ululations from the left about the narco boat strikes are, plain and simply, hysterically divested from reality.

Meanwhile, within our borders, “progressive” Democrats continue to make it as easy as possible for Americans — particularly of the uneducated, impoverished and homeless sorts — to obtain that poison to kill themselves. For years, “progressive” district attorneys like George Gascon, Chelsea Boudin, Kim Gardner, Monique Worrell, Alvin Bragg and dozens of others routinely refused to prosecute drug dealers, much less add enhancements. Progressive mayors refused to clear illegal homeless encampments where fentanyl in particular is rampant.

The consequences are undeniable: More drug use, more overdoses, more death, more suffering, more mayhem. In 2006 Los Angeles Police Department Commissioner William Bratton launched his “Safer Cities Initiative,” which cleared encampments and enforced quality of life laws, starting with LA’s notorious Skid Row. Within one year homeless overdose deaths in the area dropped by 50%. Homicides dropped even more. A later study found substantial drops in crime not just in Skid Row but throughout downtown L.A.

In contrast, “Democrat Socialist” New York mayor-elect Zorhan Mamdani has vowed to end encampment sweeps starting on his first day in office.

The drug cartels’ new BFF will soon move into Gracie Mansion.

This is “compassion” according to the modern progressive Democrat playbook: Don’t enforce laws that save lives, on the grounds that they disproportionately affect non-whites. Never mind that the consequences, up to and including horrific deaths, fall disproportionately on non-whites. Allow criminals and drug dealers to prey on homeless people, a disproportionate percentage of whom are non-white. Cut or freeze law enforcement budgets, further enabling and empowering criminal predation. Then, when a president sends a message by blowing up a few smuggling boats, act like it’s the My Lai Massacre all over again.

At a certain point, you have to ask the obvious question: Are progressive Democrats more concerned with the lives of foreign drug smugglers and terrorists than U.S. citizens and residents? Because they’re sure acting like it.