Trump Derangement Syndrome has led the corporate media, Democrats, and even some wayward Republicans to take some truly despicable public stances over the years. But defending narcoterrorists attempting to flood American communities with deadly poison may be a new low even for the Never-Trump crowd.
This is the position that many liberals now find themselves in following a report from The Washington Post effectively alleging – based on unverified anonymous claims – that President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and even rank-and-file military personnel are guilty of war crimes for blowing up drug boats bound for the United States. In their reactionary opposition to everything Trump does, the left has now decided that drug traffickers are sympathetic victims.
The story begins on the first day of Trump’s second term, when the President signed an executive order officially authorizing the designation of “certain international cartels and other organizations” as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. This designation unlocked new tools for the Trump administration to do what previous presidents had failed to; namely, use lethal force to eliminate one of the most urgent and deadly threats to the American people.
On September 1, the military exercised this authority for the first time, destroying a boat full of drugs off the coast of Venezuela and killing everyone on board. Subsequent strikes have killed more than 80 people – and stopped untold amounts of deadly substances from entering the United States.
To any American with even a modicum of decency and common sense, this is good news. Drug addiction remains a scourge on our country, particularly in the small towns and rural communities that the political establishment abandoned long ago. The United States owes nothing to evil terrorists who profit from the suffering of Americans.
But as the military has rolled out these attacks on America’s enemies, there has been no end to the pearl-clutching from the left. That reached a new frenzy this week as the Post alleged that during that first attack back in September, the military launched a second strike to eliminate two traffickers who survived the first missile. As the paper breathlessly informs us, “some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign… is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.”
The Post continues: “The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an ‘armed conflict’ with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats amounts to murder,’ said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.”
Really? No imminent threat? 81,700 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2024. More than 100,000 died in each of the three years preceding that. Many of those drugs came through exactly the same channels that the Trump administration is now targeting.
Does someone have to be running around with a gun or a bomb to be considered a “threat” to the American people? The narcoterrorists in the Caribbean pose at least as serious a threat – and likely a more tangible threat – to the American people as do the Islamist terrorists that the military spent the last 20 years chasing around the Middle East.
Even if we are to take the Post’s anonymous report as gospel truth (and there is plenty of reason to question that), the article itself presents a perfectly logical explanation for a second strike. Specifically, the survivors could still be considered legitimate targets “because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.”
But that hasn’t stopped elected Democrats from going nuclear over the whole situation. Liberal leaders in both the House and the Senate – with frustratingly naïve buy-in from some Republicans – are now calling to drag Hegseth in front of panels and demand answers.
Some Democrats are going even further and calling for everyone involved to be prosecuted – yet another transparent attempt to sow fear and uncertainty within the ranks and undermine the military’s chain of command. Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Seth Moulton told the Post, “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”
This is the sad state of the Democrat Party in 2025. Even as their own constituents suffer and die from drug addiction, Democrats want to put military personnel on trial for murder for rightfully killing the foreign terrorists who are supplying those drugs in the first place. Drug traffickers get to continue poisoning Americans, but the heroes who are eliminating them face war crime charges.
The liberal outrage appears all the more fraudulent given what we witnessed under the last two Democrat presidents.
After his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that got 13 Americans killed, Joe Biden’s incompetent Pentagon leaders attempted to make up for it by hastily launching a drone strike that murdered 10 innocent civilians – including a U.S. aid worker and seven children. Where were the calls for congressional investigations and war crimes tribunals then? The same people now calling for Pete Hegseth to go to prison for killing drug traffickers shrugged off the Biden administration’s drone striking a car full of kids, overseeing the most shameful U.S. military defeat in history, and leaving $7 billion in military equipment in the hands of the Taliban.
As for the claim that Trump should go through Congress to target the drug traffickers, where were those same voices when Barack Obama was in office? The “Drone-Striker-in-Chief” unilaterally launched 563 covert strikes without congressional approval – nearly ten times the 57 strikes launched by George W. Bush. Obama’s drone campaign killed an estimated 384 to 807 civilians, all without a peep from the left.
What liberals really can’t stand about Trump’s strikes on drug boats is that they are effective – and absolutely necessary. The Post unintentionally makes this case for the President when it relays that “the Pentagon’s lethal campaign marks a significant and controversial departure from U.S. counterdrug missions in the Western Hemisphere over the last several decades.”
“Typically, Coast Guard ships and personnel have interdicted and boarded vessels believed to be trafficking, confiscating the narcotics and detaining the suspects for further prosecution,” we are told.
And how exactly has that worked out for the United States or any of the other countries trying to destroy these narcoterrorists? The drug cartels have only become richer and powerful, and more Americans have become hooked on the poison that they are selling.
In the end, the outrage isn’t about “war crimes” – it’s about a left-wing political class so consumed with hating Donald Trump that they’ll side with blood-soaked cartel killers over their own country. If liberals want to pretend that taking out drug-running militants is some horrendous act, they’re only exposing how morally backward their worldview has become.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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