Our President, DJT has declared war on some narcotics traffickers in South and Central America, done without the consent of Congress. Our Air Force is destroying small boats in the Caribbean and Atlantic (one in the Pacific) thought to be conveying drugs, but without any proof. The ships were believed to be berthed in Venezuela or Columbia, and possibly Ecuador. 80-100 individuals on these boats have been killed without any jury trial declaring them guilty of any crimes. Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense (War) declared them guilty from afar. When war is declared by the president, he needs Congressional approval. Why wasn’t it done in this case?
When 2 men survived the attacks by American planes, planes were sent back to murder them- double tap. There has been no attempt to capture any of the boats or even the two survivors. For all we know, some or all the men may have been fishermen or migrants. With our naval forces in the area, it would have been easy to capture some or all the boats and seize their cargo. Then we would have known for certain whether these men were drug smugglers. Why wasn’t it done? Why did Trump and Hegseth take the law into their own hands and decide to kill these people without any proof that they were criminals.
And to show that his war on drug dealers is selective, Trump has pardoned the ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been convicted in an American Court of Law for conspiring to send cocaine into the United States. An article in the New York Times described Hernandez as running his country like a “narco state” and taking bribes from narcotics traffickers. When found guilty at the trial, Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The trial stretched across Trump’s first term and some of Biden’s.
A DEA agent who had been involved in the case described the pardon as “lunacy.” Another agent said the pardon hurt the reputation of the U.S. and its international investigations into drug trafficking. He added that Trump’s action “would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community. Of course, Hernandez did serve two weeks in prison before he was pardoned.
The question remains why did Trump pardon Hernandez. Trump has pardoned a number of white-collar criminals and fraudsters previously, but no known drug criminals. And why is he destroying small boats and killing people without any proof they are criminals? Is war with Venezuela on the horizon?
www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020