According to press accounts, the Trump administration, which some right-wing libertarians have humorously described as being “antiwar,” is now contemplating dropping bombs on Mexico. Yes, real bombs that kill people and destroy things, just like the bombs that U.S. national-security state officials used to kill people in Iraq, which, like Mexico, never attacked or invaded the United States. More specifically, such a bombing campaign would target drug cartels in Mexico.
Make no mistake about it. When one nation-state drops bombs on another nation-state, that is an act of war. When the first bomb drops, the United States will initiating another war of aggression — that is, the type of war that was condemned as a war crime at Nuremberg.
Before then, U.S. officials will undoubtedly try to pressure Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum into agreeing to their bombing campaign. That way, they can say that they are not really waging war on Mexico with their bombs because Mexico’s president has agreed to the U.S. Empire’s bombing of her country.
Scheinbaum has already gone to tremendous lengths in an effort to appease President Trump. She has agreed to surveillance over Mexican skies by U.S. government drones. She has sent Mexican drug dealers to Trump in what had the appearance of human tribute being paid to an emperor. She has sent 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S. Mexico border in an ostensible effort to help Trump enforce the U.S. drug war and U.S. immigration controls. And she has had her own drug warriors bust several Mexican drug-dealing operations.
As of now Sheinbaum has said that Mexico will not agree to a military attack on the country. Time will tell whether she caves and give Trump officials the fig leaf they need to launch bombing attacks on Mexico.
Notice something important here: federal officials have now conflated the much-vaunted “war on terrorism” with the much-vaunted “war on drugs.” Why is that important? Because it enables them to treat a criminal-justice matter — i.e., violations of drug laws — as a military matter, which empowers them to treat drug-war violators as “illegal enemy combatants” who don’t wear uniforms.
The war on terrorism came into existence as a result of the 9/11 attacks. The terrorists replaced the communists as America’s official enemy, and the “war on terrorism” replaced the Cold War’s “war on communists.” “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Reds are coming!” to keep Americans afraid and eager to trade their liberty for the pretense of “security.” That’s how we got the Patriot Act, TSA, illegal mass secret surveillance, and other destructions of American liberty and privacy.
The war on terrorism exposed vast omnipotent powers that had long been wielded by the U.S. national-security state. Kidnappings, military custody, torture, indefinite detention, extra-judicial execution, mass secret surveillance, and state -sponsored assassinations — all to keep us “safe” of course. While many fear-filled Americans were excited about the fact that their government was wielding such powers against “the terrorists” (and against the Muslims), what they didn’t notice in their fear was that the government could now legally wield omnipotent powers against American citizens as well.
Throughout the war on drugs, however, it was always assumed that the drug war would be operating independently of the war on terrorism. After all, drug prohibition is strictly a criminal-justice matter, one that involves a process of arrest, indictment, prosecution, and possible punishment. It’s also a matter that involves constitutional procedural protections, such as due process of law, trial by jury, right to counsel, and the presumption of innocence.
Thanks to the principle of posse comitatus, it also means that the military is absolutely prohibited from involving itself in the drug war. That’s because the American people do not want the military to be involved in matters relating to criminal justice. They want regular law enforcement personnel to enforce criminal laws and they want the regular criminal-justice system to handle violations of criminal laws. (Hypocritically, however, the U.S has long sent U.S. military forces into foreign countries to enforce the drug war. Moreover, it encourages other countries to use their own militaries to wage the drug war. )
The Trump administration has now conflated the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism” by designating drug cartels or drug gangs as “terrorist” organizations. That enables U.S. officials to now use the military and “wartime” military powers against violators of drug laws.
Don’t forget also that the war on terrorism is the “global” war on terrorism, which, in the minds of U.S. officials, empowers the U.S. Empire to do whatever is necessary to eradicate terrorism everywhere. That’s undoubtedly why people within the Trump administration feel like the U.S. can bomb Mexico even without the consent of Claudia Sheinbaum. Of course, if they get away with bombing Mexican drug-war violators under the rubric of the “war on terrorism,” there is nothing to prevent them from doing whatever is necessary to kill and destroy drug-war violators here in the United States under the same “war on terrorism” rubric, including assassinating them or sending them to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador for torture and indefinite detention. After all, don’t forget that it is a “global” war on terrorism.
Finally, it is important to note that what all too many Americans fail to realize, despite decades of drug-war failure and violence, is that nothing that U.S. officials do, including bombing Mexico, will win their war on drugs. All they will succeed in doing is accelerating the destruction of American liberty, while wreaking ever more death and destruction.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
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