A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land after a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson)
The United States military struck two boats allegedly carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on October 21 and 22, in a departure from previous strikes that targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
Both strikes were announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said in two separate posts on X that they were carried out “at the direction” of President Donlad Trump. According to Hegseth, the first strike killed two people, while the second killed three.
“These strikes will continue, day after day. These are not simply drug runners—these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities. These DTOs are the “Al Qaeda” of our hemisphere and will not escape justice. We will find them and kill them, until the threat to the American people is extinguished,” Hegseth said in the post announcing the second strike.
In August, the U.S. began a “counter narco-terror operation”. The military dispatched a large naval force with thousands of marines to the Caribbean Sea, close to Venezuela, right after the the Trump administration doubled the reward for the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million on drug trafficking charges.
The latest strikes were the eighth and ninth to be carried out by the U.S. military since the start of the operation. However, all previous seven strikes targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea. The latest strikes brought the death toll from the operation to at least 37.
Asked about the legality of the counter narco-terror operation, Trump insisted that “we have legal authority. We’re allowed to do that.”
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on October 22. “We’re totally prepared to do that. And we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.”
Trump added that the strikes are meant to save Americans and “the only way you can’t feel bad about it … is that you realize that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 lives.”
The U.S. have been using the drug problem as a pretext to escalate against Venezuela, with reports from American media itself suggesting that a regime change in Caracas is the main goal.
In recent days, however, the Trump administration shifted focus to Colombia, which has a coastline on the eastern Pacific, cutting military aid to the country.
Trump threatened to take “very serious action” against Colombia, which he accused of manufacturing illegal drugs that are brought into the U.S. in the same Oval Office meeting with reporters.
“He better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country,” he said, referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has been a vocal critic of Trump on several issues, including the previous strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Trump also called Petro a “thug and bad guy” and accused the South American country of producing illegal drugs that are “coming into the United States…generally through Mexico.”
Petro pushed back against Trump later on the same day, saying that he will defend himself through legal channels in the U.S.
“From the slanders that have been cast against me in the territory of the United States by high-ranking officials, I will defend myself judicially with American lawyers in the American justice system,” Petro said on the US social media company X, without directly naming Trump.
From the Caribbean to the eastern Pacific, the Trump administration is clearly using the war on drugs as a tool to reinstate U.S. influence in Southern America. Despite the recent escalation against Colombia, Venezuela remains at a higher risk of a direct clash with the U.S. Trump stands to gain a lot from intervening in the country that has the world’s largest oil reserves.
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as a inferior species americunt i only able to tolerate my dystopia insane asylum,um nation when narcotized
the usa stole california and the russians sold alaska to them, and then the russians stole karelia from finland and the kurile islands from the japanese, and when putler arrived, the russians started stealing so much land that because of russia, nato had to increase spending from 2% to 5%. why do you donkeys think nato increased spending? because of russia! what will be the result? such as when one species overpopulates and then fall. and we humans have multiplied too much.
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there is no god, but if he exists, he is in hell and all three religions, islam, judaism and christianity worship him.
if the world is at least a little fair and honest, russia will have to return all the stolen land to georgia, moldova and ukraine.
as an american i sometimes like to play along with the media narrative, for example: we have fetanyl coming into america that we have to stop by killing people. the only way fetanyl can be produced is with precursor chemicals from china. the people we are killing aren’t chinese. therefore hegseth and trump are dickless cowards who aren’t stopping the chinese by attacking them.