Opinion | Tap here to get this newsletter delivered to your inbox.
The Insider’s Track
Good morning,
Back in Sept. 2011, President Obama ordered a drone strike on a man named Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Awlaki was a pretty influential al-Qaeda cleric and all-around bad dude, but what was notable about his killing was that he was a US citizen, born in New Mexico. There was huge outrage and debate at the time around the idea that the American president could assassinate an American citizen extrajudicially, in violation of his Constitutional rights. I never really understood that outrage. Here was a guy who was a sworn enemy of the USA, engaged in plots to kill other Americans. Once you swear an allegiance to al-Qaeda, your citizenship kinda becomes irrelevant, at least in my mind. But this was a big civil-liberties debate back then, and Obama lost a lot of juice with the left over his use of targeted drone strikes like the one that took out Awlaki.
I bring that up because yesterday President Trump casually confirmed the US had conducted a strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela carrying suspected Tren de Aragua cartel members transporting drugs to the US, killing 11 people. Or let me rephrase that: we conducted a strike on a boat traveling in international waters carrying what Donald Trump says were cartel members running drugs to the US. Who knows how much of that is true, as any evidence is now at the bottom of the Caribbean. So we’ll have to take our government’s word for it that these were “narco terrorists” trafficking cocaine and not, like, a bunch of Venezuelan fishermen out for a ride.
What’s shocking to me is how little attention this seems to be getting in the media. Trump kinda brushed it off as: ‘yeah, let this be a warning to the cartels.’ He even posted video of the strike to drive the point home. I have no love lost for Venezuelan drug smugglers, but we should probably have a national conversation if we’re resurrecting the failed War on Drugs, right? Remember when the US had a drug problem and we declared a war on drugs and now you can’t buy drugs anymore?
Seriously though, this is such a slippery slope. I suppose you could argue it started with Obama droning Awlaki 14 years ago. Because if known terrorists are fair game for extrajudicial killings, does that make cartel leaders fair game, too? If drug traffickers are a legitimate target, well then why aren’t rapists, murderers and child abusers? And are all drug dealers terrorists now? This is why we have a justice system, to adjudicate cases like these in public with due process, appeals, etc. It’s kinda the thing that differentiates us from, say, the government of Venezuela.
The politics, though, I understand. Trump looks strong with these big shows of force, and he knows it puts Democrats in the position as having to come across like they aren’t defending drug lords. A real opposition party would be able to make the points I am making here: you can be all for taking a harder line on the drug problem without believing that sending Apaches to bomb fishing boats in international waters is the way to go about it.
Americans hate wars when we have to send our kids to fight in them, but we love when it can be done at a distance so we don’t have to think too much about it. It’s even better when it’s an amorphous enemy that can’t even really be beaten, a la Islamic terrorists or, now, drug cartels. Just drop some good old American firepower and call it a success. In the best case scenario, you get a situation like Iran where the enemy is actually too internally weak to fight back. But a hot war with drug traffickers — be they in Mexico, Venezuela, or elsewhere — is another ballgame entirely. And if we’re taking the fight to the cartels, I would like to know what the strategy is.
Trump is amassing an entire flotilla of Naval warships off the coast of Caracas. What if they get fired upon? Are we prepared to put American boots on the ground in the jungles of Latin America? For how long? What does a successful mission look like? What happens if the cartels fight back on US soil? You know, all the questions one would hope to have answered in a functioning democracy that appears to be on the precipice of starting a new war.
The Rundown
Jeffrey Epstein Documents Update as Over 30,000 Pages Released
The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday made public a large set of files it received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, offering new material but leaving many questions unanswered.
The committee’s release marked the first time lawmakers formally posted the files for public view, though much of what they contain had already circulated in years past through court records or public disclosures. Still, the move intensified pressure in Congress, where lawmakers are grappling with how to handle the politically sensitive case and whether to force full disclosure of what has become known as the “Epstein files.” Read more.
Also happening:
- Florida: State Democrats have increased the party’s share of the vote in two state special election victories. On Tuesday night, Rashon Yong and LaVon Bracy Davis won their elections for Florida’s House of Representatives and Senate respectively. The proportion of the vote they both received was more than what former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in those regions in the November 2024 election. Read more.
- World: President Donald Trump accused China, Russia and North Korea of conspiring against America as Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed his counterparts of the two nations at a lavish military parade in Beijing. Xi greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Beijing during an important show of unity and defiance toward what they see as a world illegitimately dominated by the United States. Read more.
This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
The post The 1600: Trump’s War on Drugs appeared first on Newsweek.
