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President Trump has publicly taken credit for a new, muscular strategy in the Caribbean — authorizing U.S. strikes on speedboats tied to Venezuelan trafficking networks and threatening to go after cartels “by land” if they persist. The administration calls these operators narco-terrorists and says the strikes are meant to stop deadly fentanyl and other drugs before they cross into the United States, a posture that marks a sharp break with the last administration’s softer approach.
The President has been blunt about the results, even claiming that each boat taken out saves tens of thousands of American lives and sharing footage of the strikes to make his point to a worried public. Fact-checkers and some reporters rightly press for evidence on exact drug quantities and routes, but patriotically minded Americans understand one simple truth: when our citizens are dying of poison on the streets, decisive action beats polite impotence.
In a move that has legal scholars and partisans agitated, the administration formally told Congress it views the fight against these organized trafficking networks as a non-international armed conflict, a designation that allows for more robust military measures against unlawful combatants. Critics cry foul about process and precedent, yet Washington has long tolerated half-measures while cartels grew bolder and bloodier; leadership sometimes means making hard calls to protect your people.
Predictably, the mainstream media and some foreign officials are trying to recast these strikes as reckless or misdirected, pointing to investigations that say some intercepted vessels may have been carrying marijuana or cocaine and that many routes serve markets besides the United States. Those stories deserve scrutiny, and any innocent deaths are tragic, but let no one pretend that the only acceptable response to transnational criminal violence is bureaucratic handwringing that yields nothing but more corpses back home.
Conservatives who have watched decades of failed interdiction know why the White House is acting: interdiction and arrests alone haven’t stopped the flow, so tougher deterrence is on the table — even publicly destroying vessels to break the business model of smuggling. Senators and officials like Marco Rubio have echoed that hard truth, arguing blunt force is sometimes the only language these cartels and complicit foreign actors understand.
This posture also sends an unmistakable message to Nicholas Maduro and his regime — tolerate narco-networks on your soil and expect consequences that complicate your ability to hide behind diplomatic niceties. If Washington can’t or won’t defend American lives, the result is chaos; if it can act decisively, the cartels and their state facilitators will have to think twice before treating Venezuela as a launch pad for death.
Americans who put country over conscience should applaud resolve and demand Congress back the tools needed to finish the job, while insisting on transparency and proper rules of engagement. We can be fierce defenders of liberty and law at the same time — and right now, defending our communities from poisoned supply chains is the most patriotic thing we can do.
