VIDEO: Trump’s Caribbean Strikes Are a Dangerous New Front in the Failed War on Drugs
Since October, the Trump administration has carried out 20 lethal strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean and counting, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people. A panel of experts, including IPS drug policy expert Sanho Tree, came together at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) to examine the legal, human rights, and geopolitical implications of what Sanho and the other panelists call “extrajudicial killings.”
Sanho rejected the administration’s rationale of launching the strikes to halt the traffic of fentanyl. “Neither Venezuela nor Colombia are engaged in fentanyl to any meaningful degree,” he explains. “There is no fentanyl involved in these attacks right now.”
“We’ve not only lost the war on drugs miserably,” Sanho argues, “but we are creating through our policies a much more dangerous environment.”
Sanho also rejects the administration’s characterization of drug trafficking as “terrorism.”
“Narcoterrorism really isn’t a thing. These are narcotics traffickers,” he explains. Trump is trying to “fuse the two together to produce a one-size-fits-all solution — namely, one that requires aircraft carriers and B1 bombers to solve.”
“I think what attracts Trump to this policy is that it’s almost irresistible to him,” Sanho concludes. “It’s in many ways the ultimate power: the power of the wrathful, angry God of the Old Testament, who can look down from the heavens and smite anyone who displeases him without any legal consequences to himself.”
Watch Sanho’s full remarks and the rest of the WOLA panel below:
