President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to sink a drug cartel ship. There are two questions at hand: Was it moral, and was it legal?
As far as the morality of it goes, everybody gets to be the judge for themselves. For me, yes, killing drug traffickers is moral. How many Americans have died because of an overdose? How many families have been ruined because of addiction? I don’t have a problem with it.
The legal question is more interesting. Left-wing media are calling this a “summary execution.” Which is probably good propaganda but legal nonsense. Summary execution relates to criminal activity, not military action. Otherwise, every bomb the U.S. military has dropped would count as summary execution—like the one Biden mistakenly dropped on a nice Afghan family.
Then, the question is whether this is simple law enforcement against drug trafficking or a political dispute between two states. Anti-Trump people want to act as if this is a simple law enforcement problem. Let’s look at the facts.
Fact #1: The state of Venezuela is an enemy of the United States, and one of its policies is drug trafficking. By supporting cartels, Venezuela both makes money to support its dictatorship and weakens our society.
Fact #2: Venezuelan drug cartels, most infamously Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), are run by generals of the Venezuelan military. They are armed groups that terrorize Venezuela and operate in other countries, including possibly Mexico.
Fact #3: Venezuelan cartels are also supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, which also operates in Mexico as a drug cartel.
Now, you tell me, are these cartels private drug trafficking organizations or state-sponsored terrorist groups?
When trafficking becomes the policy of a foreign enemy, it is no longer a matter of law enforcement but foreign policy. And sometimes you settle your foreign policy problem using the military. These cartels are terrorist groups, and we all know what America does to terrorists.
Peter Feaver, an expert who worked in the Bush administration’s National Security Council, said in an interview:
The approach the president is taking has already been pioneered during the War on Terror. Applying this approach to the drug mission would have been considered and debated in every administration since Reagan.
In other words, like so many other things, everybody knew what the right thing to do was, but only Trump had the guts to do it. (George H.W. Bush also literally went to war with Panama over an almost exactly similar situation and overthrew Manuel Noriega.)
Now that we have established that this is not a simple law enforcement matter, the question becomes whether sinking the ship instead of confiscating it was legal. Let me present you with a similar story.
In 2011, President Barack Obama ordered an airstrike against Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda leader. It was very controversial because al-Awlaki was a U.S. citizen in Yemen at the time. But in the end, it was legal because the courts believe that, in military matters, they should defer to the judgment of the commander-in-chief; it is for the president to decide whether sending our troops into Yemen or aboard a ship is worth the risk, instead of firing a missile.
And as far as we know, the terrorists on that cartel ship were not even U.S. citizens. So this should be even less controversial.
If this were illegal at all, the military would not have done it. How strikes work is that the president orders the secretary of defense to execute them. The secretary asks the relevant commander, General Gregory M. Guillot in this case. The commander then asks his legal adviser if this is legal and only would order the strike if the adviser says that it is within the rules of engagement according to the U.S. code.
As a great person once said, you’re entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts. The morality of this is a matter of opinion, but the legality of it is a matter of fact.
These are armed cartels sponsored by an enemy state, which itself is allied with other enemy states like Iran, that terrorize civilian populations all across the Western Hemisphere. If you think that these are random drug dealers best left to law enforcement, as opposed to terrorist groups within the purview of the U.S. military, you are just an idiot. And that’s not my opinion. That’s just a fact!
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
