Unprecedential

never before in history has state violence been associated with efforts against drug cartels

The Trump administration is using lethal strikes against drug cartel boats in the Caribbean, and — as always — journalists are quite confident that nothing like this has ever happened before. He’s murdering drugrunners, executing them without due process, in an unprecedented use of military force! I could show you a dozen recent examples of this argument, but — as always — the dumbest, laziest example could come from just one source.

Watch the master at work, typing whole paragraphs despite what appear to be significant cognitive impairments:

“We are watching Trump execute supposed drug traffickers without due process…” This is a stunning new development, and French explains that Trump supporters tolerate it because of their shameful ignorance: “They are desperate to rationalize, excuse and justify anything that he does, and they do not know much of anything about the law.”

There’s the premise: Dumb MAGA trash may not know this, but the law doesn’t allow the use of lethal force against drug cartels, because drug traffickers must be given due process, and so there’s just no reasonable role for the military in counternarcotics operations if you understand American legal and historical norms. Trump is a bizarre outlier, recklessly doing dangerous things that no one has ever dared to do before.

Now, notice the date on this news story:

So in 1986, the US Army participated in an attack on a drug processing facility in Bolivia, with 100 American infantrymen supported by a bunch of American helicopters. Screenshot, with captions:

For literally decades, with considerable controversy and debate, the United States has militarized the drug war in Latin America. Everyone on the planet knows this, and has known it for many years, as one of the most crushingly obvious political realities of this century and the last one. Again, note the date on this news story:

Here’s the introduction to the Oct.-Dec. 2012 issue of Special Warfare magazine, an official publication of the US Army, from pg. 4 of this PDF file:

So other than infantry assaults and shooting down planes and embedding Special Forces soldiers with Latin American militaries in a few hundred armed raids over the course of five-plus decades, it’s a shocking break with American political norms to use lethal force against the cartels. No one else has ever done it before, except for literally every single other president.

If this isn’t a history you’re familiar with, you can read a detailed discussion of American military counternarcotics operations here, with extensive legal and political context. If you want an example straight from the source, you can read President Bill Clinton’s 1993 Presidential Decision Directive on Counternarcotics in the Western Hemisphere, assigning a substantial role in drug interdiction to the military, here.

Once again, Donald Trump is doing something that’s highly debatable, and can be argued about well within the bounds of ordinary political disagreement, but the debate is garbaged up with a bunch of hysterical and willfully obtuse fakery about his supposedly shocking break with American political norms. We never have honest debate, because of the growing psychosis of Trump monomania within the preening and empty “new elite” in media, academia, and politics. Trump is not the first American president to think up the allegedly stunning idea of using lethal force against the supply of illegal drugs from Latin America, and anyone who suggests to you that he is should be regarded as a colossal idiot.

Going back to David French and his lazy argument, the same goes for the part about gathering armed force outside Venezuela without congressional approval. Again, a highly debatable choice, but also comparable to the Obama administration’s unapproved war in Libya or the Biden administration’s attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen. If we reach beyond very recent examples, Thomas Jefferson sent the US Navy and a bunch of Marines to attack pirates in Northern Africa, and did so without a congressional declaration of war. Right or wrong, Trump isn’t doing anything new with these choices, which are all well within the range of long-established political norms. We’re addicted to hysteria, and it prevents meaningful debate.

Maybe that’s the point of it.

See also my recent essay at Tom Klingenstein’s website on Trump’s supposed “politicization” of the military.