Murder License Issued

The sinking of a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela has turned out to have ominous political and military implications. President Trump has taken the entirely illegal (and irrational) step of authorizing the US military to issue shoot-to-kill orders against suspected drug smugglers. 

As we have seen in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, Trump is expanding the traditional role of the military, and common-sense notions of national security, by converting soldiers into policemen, smugglers into enemy combatants, and drug trafficking into state terrorism. Trump’s order gives soldiers license to kill drug dealers on sight, just as they did in the attack on the Venezuelan boat.  

A former homeland security official in the Obama administration, Jeh Johnson, said: “Here the president appears to be invoking his amorphous constitutional authority to kill low-level drug couriers on the high seas, with no due process, arrest or trial,” he said, adding: “Viewed in isolation, labeling drug cartels ‘terrorists’ and invoking the ‘national interests’ to use the U.S. military to summarily kill low-level drug couriers is pretty extreme.”

The Department of War’s First Action

Trump may also be using the boat incident to take aim at Venezuela’s leadership. As usual, Trump and company have offered no details on the incident: where the attack occurred, how they knew the boat carried drugs and was headed to a US port, and why (contrary to earlier US intelligence findings) it believes the Venezuelan government controls the alleged drug trafficker gang that was killed. 

This coverup coincides, perhaps not coincidentally, with a US military buildup in the Caribbean that might be the prelude to an attack on Venezuela. The White House press secretary has prepared the way, saying: “The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel.”

Those words typically come from an imperial presidency, which Trump seems to embrace with his justification for renaming the defense department the Department of War. He says the US hasn’t won a war since World War II—that it has held back from winning because the country “decided to go woke.” 

Now, presumably, we’re going to start winning wars, and the Caribbean may look to Trump like an easy win. A US buildup there has invasion written all over it: eight warships, several surveillance planes, and one attack submarine.

If the US attacks, you can expect that Trump will justify it as a counter-terrorism operation when in fact it will be designed to bring about regime change—the removal of President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in Trump’s crosshairs since Trump’s first term. All it may take to touch off a US attack, in defense of national interests of course, is an incident such as the buzzing of a Navy guided-missile destroyer by two Venezuelan jets last week. 

Remember the Bay of Pigs, Tonkin Bay, and 9/11? We’ve seen this play before.

Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.

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