Trump’s Killings at Sea Escalate the US’s Forever Drug War
Donald Trump’s lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific are a brutal escalation of the United States’ long-running “war on drugs,” a bipartisan war that has seen the US involved in torture and extrajudicial killing abroad since the 1970s.
Donald Trump wouldn’t be able to do what he does in continuing the war on drugs if it weren’t for policies and institutions put in place by all too many of his predecessors. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
Today Donald Trump presides over his own Murder Incorporated, less a government than a death squad.
Many brushed off his proclamation early in his second term that the Gulf of Mexico would henceforth be called the Gulf of America as a foolish, yet harmless, show of dominance. Now, however, he’s created an ongoing bloodbath in the adjacent Caribbean Sea.
The Pentagon has so far destroyed a total of eighteen go-fast boats there and in the Pacific Ocean. No evidence has been presented or charges brought suggesting that those ships were running drugs, as claimed by the administration. The White House has simply continued to release bird’s-eye-view surveillance videos (snuff films, really) of a targeted vessel. Then comes a flash of light and it’s gone, as are the humans it was carrying, be they drug smugglers, fishermen, or migrants. As far as we know, at least sixty-four people have already been killed in such attacks.
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