Trump’s Caribbean Murder Theater
Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Trump’s Caribbean Murder Theater
Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Trump recently ordered the U.S. Navy to blow up a Venezuelan speedboat, killing 11 people. Allegedly these people were “drug runners”, but there were no arrests, no evidence recovered.
Not even an attempt to confirm what they were carrying.
Just a missile strike..
Where does most of the cocaine flooding into the U.S. actually come from?
Colombia.
Always has.
Even the DEA admits this. And since Washington got its claws deeper into Colombia with “Plan Colombia” and all the billions dumped into DEA operations, guess what? Cocaine production actually went up.
Eradication programs, military aid, spraying chemicals over farmland, it all backfired. Supply surged, cartels got richer, and the DEA has gotten to keep their budgets fat.
But suddenly, Venezuela, where cocaine output is a fraction of Colombia’s, is the villain. The story sells because it’s politically convenient.
Caracas is an enemy, Bogotá is a “partner.” So we bomb Venezuelans, while Colombian cartels keep shipping more white powder north than ever.
If you’re a trafficker moving serious weight, you’re not cruising through the Caribbean right past U.S. Navy destroyers.
That’s suicide.
Cocaine moves through the Pacific, up the west coast of Central America, into Mexico, then across the border. That’s the dominant route, and it’s been that way for years.
The Caribbean runs are old-school and high-risk.
So what exactly were these 11 Venezuelans doing out there? Fishing? Smuggling gas? (Venezuela has the cheapest in the world)
Who knows, we’ll never find out. Because instead of boarding the boat, seizing evidence, and showing the world what was on board, Trump had them vaporized.
This was all really about optics.
You don’t use billion-dollar warships and live missiles to enforce narcotics law. You do it to send a message: to Venezuela, to South America, and to Trump’s base.
If this was really about drugs, we’d be sending inspectors onto boats, collecting evidence, showing seizures on camera. That’s how interdiction works.
This was a spectacle of a small man trying to look “tough”.
The U.S. has run this playbook before.
Remember the drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen?
Strike first, announce later that the dead were “terrorists,” and never bother proving it. Families were obliterated at weddings, farmers were bombed in their fields, but it was always wrapped in the same tired excuse of “desperate times, desperate measures.”
This was the drone war mentality transplanted to South America.
Evidence is optional, due process doesn’t exist, and the victims aren’t U.S. citizens so they don’t even deserve names.
The difference is only in geography.
The United States reserves the right to kill whoever it wants, wherever it wants, and then dare the world to question it.
Meanwhile, the actual cocaine trade keeps thriving.
Colombia’s cartels are stronger than ever, and the DEA keeps justifying its failure by demanding more funding, while likely complicit in the drug production.
The people who keep the cocaine flowing aren’t the ones getting blown to pieces at sea. They’re the ones cutting deals, laundering money, and operating under the noses of the very agencies supposedly fighting them.
Another topic we don’t even seem to bother with addressing is the fact that the demand is here, not there.
Americans are the ones snorting, smoking, and shooting up billions of dollars’ worth of product every year. That’s what keeps the cartels rich and the boats moving. But instead of asking why so many people in the U.S. are desperate enough to numb themselves with cocaine, heroin, or fentanyl, Washington pretends the problem can be solved by blowing up fishermen in the Caribbean.
It’s easier to drop bombs on “smugglers” than to admit that the rot is at home.
The “war on drugs” has never been about stopping drugs.
If it were, we’d be asking why Americans consume more cocaine, opioids, and meth than any other population on Earth.
But we don’t. Because to do that would mean staring into the mirror and admitting that this society breeds addiction.
A country where people work themselves into the ground, live paycheck to paycheck, drown in medical debt, and are told to just keep hustling until they collapse, that’s a country primed for drug use.
The demand isn’t coming from Venezuela or Colombia. It’s coming from cubicles, warehouses, suburbs, and rural towns across the United States.
Capitalism manufactures misery, and misery creates the perfect market for drugs. That’s why the DEA has been “fighting” this war for decades, while the cartels only get stronger and the overdose statistics climb higher.
The root problem isn’t supply, it’s demand.
That demand is baked into the very structure of American life. As long as that machine keeps grinding people down, no amount of bombs, no amount of narco-raids, and no amount of dead fishermen will ever make a dent.