I debated including this in the post, but decided not to clutter up a bunch of documented history with a personal anecdote. So let's do it here:
I had a long discussion, twenty years ago, with an infantry E-8 who had spent a great deal of time in Latin America on counternarcotics operations with the Marine Corps. I asked him if he spoke Spanish, and he said no, so I asked him if it had been hard to, you know, navigate culturally in a place where he didn't speak the language. He laughed out loud: "We weren't trying to have a lot of conversations."
There are a good number of veterans walking among us who personally understand the absurdity of the "oh no, Trump is killing drug traffickers without due process" thing. We're at least fifty years deep into that choice. I'm not arguing that it's beyond debate, but let's be real.
Leave it to The Righteous Reverend David French to ignore the Americans affected by the PIRATES’ killer instincts/actions.
My darling did drug interdiction patrols/boardings in the USCG. Long ago.
At least at that time, and those places, the pirates were way better equipped than the Coasties. Who were often making do with equipment handed down by the Navy, some of it appallingly ancient.
Then there were all the RoEs. And something mentioned over the years as 46-26-26.15 IIRC. The CFR regarding boarding. And the mission rules from the boarding officer.
The Muh Due Process Rev. French says doesn't exist.
In some cases a split second of reflexes, firearms training back to childhood, and sheer Providence is what stands between an American Coastie finishing the job and coming home in something other than a box. (In which case the due process for the family involves filling out VA paperwork.)
I know mine was far from the only one carrying scars from encounters with pirates' non-due-process-based intent to kill Americans there, and many more down the road with their poisons. Since it's not a declared war, these Coasties and others don't get Purple Hearts. Yeah. Whatever.
And the contraband went over the gunwales. And a cadre of lawyers sprung the pirates in 48--as usual (yay! due process!!). And they were immediately requipped for the next run. Business is business.
And the parties with a conscience mopped up/got sewn up, if lucky, and had the rest of their lives to reflect on the interplay of lethal force, and their reactions/actions.
And the parties with no conscience have The Righteous Reverend David French performatively wanking on their behalf. The poor downtrodden darlings.
Hey Reverend, you know who else doesn’t get Purple Hearts for injury in the drug war? Those of us who put in hard time caring for the victims of the drug war in places like big city burn/emergency/trauma units, or on the streets of our home towns.
I excised the rest of what I have to say to David French. Honestly I can wish him no worse than that he be exactly what he is. A Matterhorn-sized heap of louse excrement. As useless as teats on an eel. Holder of a lofty journecclesiastical sinecure, assaying to click into and exploit the God-shaped hole systematically exploded into the hearts of PC/DEI types for a century now.
Thank you for stating the obvious, I got kicked off of the mailing list for Dave Morrison, the blue-collar logic guy, because he said if I supported killing drug dealers, then I obviously didn’t believe in due process. It’s hard for liberals to understand that we are at war with the cartels. We have tried capturing drug boats with the Coast Guard forces during the last three decades, and this has had little impact on the cartels. But the cartels do notice it when we blow up their ships. And we are at war with these people, they are destroying our cities with drugs, bribing police to allow the drugs into our country, and all sorts of other nefarious stuff. So thank you for exposing the idiocy of some folks who think that our enemies should be allowed to kill us.
Nevertheless, Chris, it's crazy that we're just executing foreign citizens over some "morally" guided principal of stopping drug flow (that sounds so stupid when typed).
Not a good look for the US when viewed from an international perspective.
Particularly for a guy who ran on a no-war platform.
Thank you for remembering BMCS Horne, his family, and shipmates.
It's easy for the David Frenches of the world to overlook the downstream effects of this trafficking. Reminds me of Nick Kristof insisting that Portland is the best of all possible worlds, because of the Superb World Class Pinots.
Portlander Kevin Dahlgren does an outstanding job of documenting what many people try to look past in that city. His most recent posting is about the effects of Xylazine, added to fent by the Chinese cartels.
His colleague Tara Faul's photos begin to scratch the surface (so to speak) of the human tragedy.
I do regard this as war, but only one side is allowed to fight. The injuries these people are suffering are in the same intensity as trench warfare in 1915. Or men sent over the top at Gallipoli. Or civilians post-air-raid.
Of course the Frenches and Kristofs don't care about these people. The Righteous Reverend David pontificates—if I can use that word with a Presby—about Due Process, not about selling cloak to buy sword.
I'd also like to note that the boarding party my darling described, and was shot while conducting, did not involve Coasties shooting and pirates shooting back. The latter drew literal first blood. The boarding party was following the letter of all the interlocking policies and laws under which they operated. This was the main thrust of what haunted my darling: that "law" had been twisted into shackles that enabled lawlessness to various degrees in different settings. That’s a major blackpill for someone who signs on the dotted line. Realizing that altar exists, and who gets sacrificed on it.
I'd say to Occam, if you think the violence required to let fockin' Chinese cartels know your country means business is "not a good look" (I paused there to sniff smelling salts for my vapors), then follow Kevin for the hopey changey joyous beauty of how All Is Well And All Will Be Well in the garden of cornered and flailing globoProg.
These people operate in a state of hallucination within a fog of delusion which lets them evade knowing just how much they hate regular Americans. And dammit, they intend it stay that way. Have another glass of pinot! On top of the “edibles,” and the SSRIs!! EW, POPULISM!
Easily explained by the fact the David French is (1) a moron (2) always has been a moron, and (3) has never allowed a fact to get in the way of whatever narrative his moronic brain came up with in the middle of the prior night.
I’m impressed you actually read what he wrote. That is punishment enough for an entire month. I couldn’t be bothered to read anything he has ever written.
We invaded Panama to depose Noriega and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and racketeering charges. I'm fairly sure ol' David French was around for that.
Thanks, in my mind I was trying to be charitable by steelmanning whatever the loathsome David French came up with (I didn't read it) and assume he was referring to lack of approval by the local sovereign government. Then I remembered Syria, where Obama-Hillary were openly calling for the overthrow of the legal govt and included Al-Qaeda in their clandestine CIA army (as revealed by Edward Snowden) to accomplish that. But it's likely French has some different and very complicated set of rules for the ME.
The irony is that people like David French accuse Trump supporters of reflexively supporting everything he does, while they, with their credentials and nuanced wisdom, reflexively oppose everything he does.
A normal person would be mortally embarrassed to be called out on their ignorance, but French is not normal. I’ll never tire of you calling him out, Chris, so thank you! It’s always entertaining and enlightening. Honestly, how can his editor allow such claptrap to be published? The incompetence is obvious, but still somehow stunning!
“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.”
100% nailed it with this passage.
The hysteria allows powerful interests to continue to divide and distract the peasants including me.
Chris, I would love to see you and David French do a modern day Firing Line. You, of course, would be the William F Buckley because you have logic, reason and critical thinking skills and and poor David French would be the blathering, sputtering Rumpelstiltskin character of the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. That would be an epic podcast!
Just one of his many despicable traits! Aside from being a lowlife, lying, degenerate. Where's Mr Griswold when you need a good rant? Oh, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66nSZzBNkTU
Has David French forgotten about Obama’s attacks on wedding parties where innocent people (brides, grooms, and guests) were slaughtered? Or how about Obama’s decision to kill American citizens without any due process at all? I seem to recall a teenage American boy murdered at a cafe somewhere in the Middle East.
Everything is upside down. The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is an ex- M-19 member and a Marxist fruitcake. M-19 was the urban revolutionary terrorist counterpart of FARC, which is concentrated in the rural areas of Colombia. The thing with these South American narco-guerilla groups is that they use the drug money to conduct war. Over 260,000 people in Colombia have been killed in the conflict between the FARC Communists and the government over many decades. 7,000,000 people were displaced. It's something completely different than what people usually think of when they think of drug dealers here. These are large paramilitary organizations, and Maduro uses the same tactics in Venezuela to make money and support his corrupt oligarchy. Mr. French knows this. He doesn't think we do, and so he uses this information to ding Trump. The New York Times is so bad now that there isn't even a word in the English language for it.
The unprecedented part is Trump openly says ‘you bring fentanyl into our country we will find you and kill you wherever you are. By openly blasting drug boats (or did he? If he wants to scare them into stopping, AI some boat blasts) boat mules will say ‘No hombre. It is my Papa’s 60th birthday this weekend. Ask Miguel to do it.’ And Miguel will say ‘Senor I feel a cold coming on. It might be COVID. Maybe ask Eduardo.’
I miss Julie Kelly on X, when she used to rip French at every opportunity back in the Twitter days! A quick look at her timeline, shows she's ignoring the garbage human these days. I miss Bongino having a say on this too. Oh well. Thanks for pointing at disaster anyways.
You can't debate us, we're the elite and you're not. Now shut up and support whatever we tell you is best. That's why we can't have honest debate - because the side closest to power has no interest at all in what we have to say.
I debated including this in the post, but decided not to clutter up a bunch of documented history with a personal anecdote. So let's do it here:
I had a long discussion, twenty years ago, with an infantry E-8 who had spent a great deal of time in Latin America on counternarcotics operations with the Marine Corps. I asked him if he spoke Spanish, and he said no, so I asked him if it had been hard to, you know, navigate culturally in a place where he didn't speak the language. He laughed out loud: "We weren't trying to have a lot of conversations."
There are a good number of veterans walking among us who personally understand the absurdity of the "oh no, Trump is killing drug traffickers without due process" thing. We're at least fifty years deep into that choice. I'm not arguing that it's beyond debate, but let's be real.
Leave it to The Righteous Reverend David French to ignore the Americans affected by the PIRATES’ killer instincts/actions.
My darling did drug interdiction patrols/boardings in the USCG. Long ago.
At least at that time, and those places, the pirates were way better equipped than the Coasties. Who were often making do with equipment handed down by the Navy, some of it appallingly ancient.
Then there were all the RoEs. And something mentioned over the years as 46-26-26.15 IIRC. The CFR regarding boarding. And the mission rules from the boarding officer.
The Muh Due Process Rev. French says doesn't exist.
In some cases a split second of reflexes, firearms training back to childhood, and sheer Providence is what stands between an American Coastie finishing the job and coming home in something other than a box. (In which case the due process for the family involves filling out VA paperwork.)
I know mine was far from the only one carrying scars from encounters with pirates' non-due-process-based intent to kill Americans there, and many more down the road with their poisons. Since it's not a declared war, these Coasties and others don't get Purple Hearts. Yeah. Whatever.
And the contraband went over the gunwales. And a cadre of lawyers sprung the pirates in 48--as usual (yay! due process!!). And they were immediately requipped for the next run. Business is business.
And the parties with a conscience mopped up/got sewn up, if lucky, and had the rest of their lives to reflect on the interplay of lethal force, and their reactions/actions.
And the parties with no conscience have The Righteous Reverend David French performatively wanking on their behalf. The poor downtrodden darlings.
Hey Reverend, you know who else doesn’t get Purple Hearts for injury in the drug war? Those of us who put in hard time caring for the victims of the drug war in places like big city burn/emergency/trauma units, or on the streets of our home towns.
I excised the rest of what I have to say to David French. Honestly I can wish him no worse than that he be exactly what he is. A Matterhorn-sized heap of louse excrement. As useless as teats on an eel. Holder of a lofty journecclesiastical sinecure, assaying to click into and exploit the God-shaped hole systematically exploded into the hearts of PC/DEI types for a century now.
The “muh due process French”!! LO effin L!
Sorry, REVEREND French!
I love that last line.
Thank you for stating the obvious, I got kicked off of the mailing list for Dave Morrison, the blue-collar logic guy, because he said if I supported killing drug dealers, then I obviously didn’t believe in due process. It’s hard for liberals to understand that we are at war with the cartels. We have tried capturing drug boats with the Coast Guard forces during the last three decades, and this has had little impact on the cartels. But the cartels do notice it when we blow up their ships. And we are at war with these people, they are destroying our cities with drugs, bribing police to allow the drugs into our country, and all sorts of other nefarious stuff. So thank you for exposing the idiocy of some folks who think that our enemies should be allowed to kill us.
Coast Guard: "Heave to for a stop and search!"
Narco Smuggler: "Beat this MFs!" Pushes throttles forward.
Drone Pilot: "I see your forty-five knots and raise you two hundred."
Nevertheless, Chris, it's crazy that we're just executing foreign citizens over some "morally" guided principal of stopping drug flow (that sounds so stupid when typed).
Not a good look for the US when viewed from an international perspective.
Particularly for a guy who ran on a no-war platform.
Debatable, but I don't regard this as "war."
As a commenter above just said, the Coast Guard has been shooting at drug boats for decades, and the people on the boats have shot back.
https://www.mycg.uscg.mil/News/Article/4309990/remembering-bmcs-terrell-hornefather-friend-hero-mentor-and-frc-namesake/
Thank you for remembering BMCS Horne, his family, and shipmates.
It's easy for the David Frenches of the world to overlook the downstream effects of this trafficking. Reminds me of Nick Kristof insisting that Portland is the best of all possible worlds, because of the Superb World Class Pinots.
Portlander Kevin Dahlgren does an outstanding job of documenting what many people try to look past in that city. His most recent posting is about the effects of Xylazine, added to fent by the Chinese cartels.
https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/in-portland-homelessness-can-literally
His colleague Tara Faul's photos begin to scratch the surface (so to speak) of the human tragedy.
I do regard this as war, but only one side is allowed to fight. The injuries these people are suffering are in the same intensity as trench warfare in 1915. Or men sent over the top at Gallipoli. Or civilians post-air-raid.
Of course the Frenches and Kristofs don't care about these people. The Righteous Reverend David pontificates—if I can use that word with a Presby—about Due Process, not about selling cloak to buy sword.
I'd also like to note that the boarding party my darling described, and was shot while conducting, did not involve Coasties shooting and pirates shooting back. The latter drew literal first blood. The boarding party was following the letter of all the interlocking policies and laws under which they operated. This was the main thrust of what haunted my darling: that "law" had been twisted into shackles that enabled lawlessness to various degrees in different settings. That’s a major blackpill for someone who signs on the dotted line. Realizing that altar exists, and who gets sacrificed on it.
I'd say to Occam, if you think the violence required to let fockin' Chinese cartels know your country means business is "not a good look" (I paused there to sniff smelling salts for my vapors), then follow Kevin for the hopey changey joyous beauty of how All Is Well And All Will Be Well in the garden of cornered and flailing globoProg.
These people operate in a state of hallucination within a fog of delusion which lets them evade knowing just how much they hate regular Americans. And dammit, they intend it stay that way. Have another glass of pinot! On top of the “edibles,” and the SSRIs!! EW, POPULISM!
Easily explained by the fact the David French is (1) a moron (2) always has been a moron, and (3) has never allowed a fact to get in the way of whatever narrative his moronic brain came up with in the middle of the prior night.
I’m impressed you actually read what he wrote. That is punishment enough for an entire month. I couldn’t be bothered to read anything he has ever written.
^^^This!^^^
We invaded Panama to depose Noriega and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and racketeering charges. I'm fairly sure ol' David French was around for that.
Without congressional authorization, no less.
Thanks, in my mind I was trying to be charitable by steelmanning whatever the loathsome David French came up with (I didn't read it) and assume he was referring to lack of approval by the local sovereign government. Then I remembered Syria, where Obama-Hillary were openly calling for the overthrow of the legal govt and included Al-Qaeda in their clandestine CIA army (as revealed by Edward Snowden) to accomplish that. But it's likely French has some different and very complicated set of rules for the ME.
The irony is that people like David French accuse Trump supporters of reflexively supporting everything he does, while they, with their credentials and nuanced wisdom, reflexively oppose everything he does.
TDS is the ultimate brain rot.
Nice review of history so obscure professionals can't possibly be expected to know it.
A normal person would be mortally embarrassed to be called out on their ignorance, but French is not normal. I’ll never tire of you calling him out, Chris, so thank you! It’s always entertaining and enlightening. Honestly, how can his editor allow such claptrap to be published? The incompetence is obvious, but still somehow stunning!
His editor allows the claptrap to be published because it's juicy red meat for the NY Times' TDS audience. Facts... shmacts... who needs 'em?
The editors are no smarter than French. They are captured by the same ideology. Their main function is to correct punctuation.
Its published because it supports the narrative and the morons will lap it up.
Its for the base that is not allowed to think for themselves.
Because his editor is as ignorant as MAGA supporters are claimed to be?
“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.”
100% nailed it with this passage.
The hysteria allows powerful interests to continue to divide and distract the peasants including me.
Chris, I would love to see you and David French do a modern day Firing Line. You, of course, would be the William F Buckley because you have logic, reason and critical thinking skills and and poor David French would be the blathering, sputtering Rumpelstiltskin character of the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. That would be an epic podcast!
The fucker won't even reply to me on X, or respond to questions by email. He's a coward.
Just one of his many despicable traits! Aside from being a lowlife, lying, degenerate. Where's Mr Griswold when you need a good rant? Oh, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66nSZzBNkTU
A snob. Rich, entitled, presumptuous, divisive.
But a very good Christian, I understand
The very best. Head and shoulders above all the others.
He tithes mint and cumin better than anyone. And rightly prays, “Lord, I thank you that I am not like other people, especially MAGAts!”
😲 I'm shocked!
🙄 Not at all.
The US DEA was active in the Afghanistan War, using SOCOM assets to destroy drug production, drug trafficking and dug traffickers. Many of the SOCOM gunfights in that war were drug-focused and DEA-briefed. https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2025/09/05/fast-kco-memorial-unveiled-honor-fallen-dea-special-agents-and-military
I wasn't super keen on calling the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" back in the day, but for this French, I retract my objection.
Has David French forgotten about Obama’s attacks on wedding parties where innocent people (brides, grooms, and guests) were slaughtered? Or how about Obama’s decision to kill American citizens without any due process at all? I seem to recall a teenage American boy murdered at a cafe somewhere in the Middle East.
David French can't forget what he was choosing to ignore in the first place.
😃
Everything is upside down. The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is an ex- M-19 member and a Marxist fruitcake. M-19 was the urban revolutionary terrorist counterpart of FARC, which is concentrated in the rural areas of Colombia. The thing with these South American narco-guerilla groups is that they use the drug money to conduct war. Over 260,000 people in Colombia have been killed in the conflict between the FARC Communists and the government over many decades. 7,000,000 people were displaced. It's something completely different than what people usually think of when they think of drug dealers here. These are large paramilitary organizations, and Maduro uses the same tactics in Venezuela to make money and support his corrupt oligarchy. Mr. French knows this. He doesn't think we do, and so he uses this information to ding Trump. The New York Times is so bad now that there isn't even a word in the English language for it.
This is an interesting essay by a conflicted retired Navy officer.
https://substack.com/@cdrsalamander/p-176701990
French couldn't reach this level of analysis in his remaining lifetime.
Don't know how I missed that -- I subscribe. It's magnificent analysis, balanced and detailed, from someone who knows how.
The unprecedented part is Trump openly says ‘you bring fentanyl into our country we will find you and kill you wherever you are. By openly blasting drug boats (or did he? If he wants to scare them into stopping, AI some boat blasts) boat mules will say ‘No hombre. It is my Papa’s 60th birthday this weekend. Ask Miguel to do it.’ And Miguel will say ‘Senor I feel a cold coming on. It might be COVID. Maybe ask Eduardo.’
I miss Julie Kelly on X, when she used to rip French at every opportunity back in the Twitter days! A quick look at her timeline, shows she's ignoring the garbage human these days. I miss Bongino having a say on this too. Oh well. Thanks for pointing at disaster anyways.
"We never have honest debate..."
You can't debate us, we're the elite and you're not. Now shut up and support whatever we tell you is best. That's why we can't have honest debate - because the side closest to power has no interest at all in what we have to say.