Apparently taking a page out of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug-war playbook, President Trump is taking credit for the intentional military killings of eleven people in international waters near Venezuela.
Duterte is on trial right now before the International Criminal Court for allegedly ordering his drug-war goons to kill accused drug-war offenders on sight — that is, without arrest, prosecution, trial, and due process of law.
That’s what Trump just did. He ordered his military drug-war goons to blow a boat out of the water that was traveling in international waters near Venezuela, killing, Trump proudly claimed, eleven people in the process.
No stopping of the boat to search it. No arrests. No grand-jury indictments. No trials in federal district court. None of that. On Trump’s orders, his military drug-war goons dutifully, loyally, and obediently fired military projectiles at the boat knowing full well that they would be killing all of the boat’s occupants.
In my opinion, that’s just murder, pure and simple. Sure, it’s legalized murder. After all, there is no chance whatsoever that Trump’s Justice Department will seek criminal charges against Trump and his military killers. Even if it did, there is no possibility whatsoever that the US Supreme Court would permit the charges to stand, given the extreme deference that the Court has always paid to the US national-security establishment. The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over US officials and even if it did, there is no doubt that Trump and his military drug-war goons would ignore any criminal proceeding against them anyway.
Let’s keep in mind something important: Drug-war offenses are criminal offenses. Even though we all call it a “war on drugs,” it is not a war in the true sense of the term. That is, we are not talking about a war like World War I or World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or the US undeclared wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. We are talking about federal criminal offenses, not acts of war.
That means that under our system of constitutional government, people are presumed to be innocent of criminal offenses until proven guilty in a court of law. Under the US Constitution, which is supposed to control the actions of federal officials, US officials are prohibited from simply killing people who they suspect have committed a crime, especially because everyone is innocent under the law until proven guilty in a court of law. As the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states, federal officials, including the president, the military, the CIA, DEA, and ICE, are expressly prohibited from depriving anyone of life without due process of law, which means, at a minimum, formal notice of criminal charges and a trial.
None of those eleven people who Trump and his military drug-war goons just killed was ever convicted of anything in a court of law. Nonetheless, Trump and his military drug-war goons knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately deprived them of life by shooting them dead, simply because Trump and his military drug-war goons were convinced that their victims were committing drug-related offenses.
Prior to Trump, US drug-war policy in international waters has been consistent with the principles of American criminal jurisprudence (even though one could be forgiven for wondering why US officials have the legal authority to enforce their drug war in international waters). If the US Coast Guard, for example, suspects a boat traveling in international waters of carrying illegal drugs, Coast Guard officials stop it, board it, and search it. If illegal drugs are found, the occupants of the boat are transported to the United States, indicted, and tried for drug-related offenses in US District Court.
That’s obviously not what Trump and his military drug-war goons did. They just blew that boat out of the water with the obvious intent to kill all of its occupants. Who needs a stinking trial, due process, and pesky criminal defense attorneys? Much easier to simply murder those drug-war suspects and save the taxpayers a lot of money.
What are those deadly US military warships doing off Venezuelan waters anyway? Enforcing the drug war? Don’t make me laugh. Does anyone really believe that blowing up that boat and killing those eleven people will help bring “victory” in the decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual war on drugs? If you believe that, I’ve got a really nice bridge in the Sahara desert I’d like to sell you. Nothing — repeat nothing! — will ever win the war on drugs, except drug legalization. In fact, not even Rodrigo Duterte won the war on drugs in the Philippines. The war on drugs is a perpetual racket that will go on forever because there are too many people dependent on it, including both drug cartels and the vast US drug-war governmental bureaucracy.
As James Madison once observed, in Roman times whenever there were signs of rebellion among the people, Roman emperors would start a foreign war, which would cause everyone to rally to the empire and forget what they were rebelling against. As I wrote in my July 22, 2025, article “Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis,” don’t be surprised if Trump does the same to suppress the rebellion relating to the continued secrecy of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
And so here we are, with US warships off Venezuelan shores. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if those warships suddenly encountered a Gulf of Tonkin-like “attack,” after which Trump dramatically announces, “We’ve been attacked! Today a couple of Venezuelan rowboats initiated a surprise attack against our powerful warships that were just minding their own business off Venezuelan shores. We now have no choice but to defend ourselves. I have ordered our brave troops to invade Venezuela and effect a regime-change operation by capturing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who we all know is an illegitimate drug lord president, and to bring him back to the United States in chains, where we will parade him down the streets of Washington, D.C., before incarcerating him for the rest of his life in one of our high-security prisons or maybe even just execute him. God bless America.”
In the process, millions of American “patriots” will hop to, click their heels, support the troops, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the Star Spangled Banner, and quickly forget the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
For many years, I have warned against the dangers of combining the war-on-terrorism racket with the drug-war racket, which is precisely what Trump is doing to justify his killing of those eleven individuals. But every American should keep two important things in mind: One, like drug offenses, terrorism itself is a federal criminal offense, not an act of war; and, two, the omnipotent power to kill drug-war suspects in international waters under the rubric of waging the “war on terrorism” can easily be extended to the United States and thereby help destroy the little that is left of American liberty.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
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