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Why are U.S. Special Forces sinking boats in the Caribbean—seven vessels to date, killing 32 people onboard? Is it part of the war on drugs? Were the boats ferrying deadly drugs to our shores? Is this prelude, whether justified or contrived, to a regime-change war against Venezuela—and now, possibly, Colombia?

These questions are hard to answer, in part because the Trump administration has furnished so few details about the operations and no evidence supporting its fist-bumping claims. After the first sinking, on Sept. 3, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth crowed, “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean, and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate.”

What other person in Hegseth’s position has ever talked like this, especially in describing the rather effortless action of a superpower with a $1 trillion military budget going up against a small boat that didn’t get off a single shot, if it was armed to begin with?

But quite apart from his juvenile braggadocio, neither Hegseth nor anyone else offered the slightest evidence that the boat was carrying drugs. Even if it was, that doesn’t make them “terrorists,” in the same sense as ISIS or al-Qaida (Hegseth likened them explicitly) or justify killing them. Many retired officers, including military lawyers, have said that there is no legal justification or tactical need to do what the administration has done seven times now. Even if these were drug smugglers, and even if they were carrying illicit narcotics to American shores (another uncertainty), international law draws a clear line between criminals and terrorists, which, in order to justify the use of deadly force, have to be part of an organized armed group.

A telling fact, unmentioned by the administration (and unreported by most news media): A couple of weeks after the first boat-bombing, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the largest haul of narcotics in its history—76,140 pounds, having a value of $473 million, enough to supply 23 million lethal doses—in 19 interdictions in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The Coast Guard did this not by blasting the drug boats, but in the usual way—halting the boats, boarding them, seizing the drugs, and arresting the smugglers. In 2022, the most recent year for which there is complete data, the Coast Guard seized 105 tons of illegal narcotics in this way.

By any measure, the seven boats, even if they were loaded to the brim with drugs (and they may well have been), are small potatoes by comparison. As he often does, Trump exaggerates the effect of his boat-sinking operation, saying that each boat had enough fentanyl onboard to kill 25,000 Americans, so if three or 11 Venezuelans were killed in the process, the trade-off is worth it. Actually, very little fentanyl comes from Venezuela, but let’s say all of it does. Trump’s math still makes no sense. About 80,000 Americans died in 2023 from overdose of opioids (mainly fentanyl). If Trump’s claim were true, sinking three boats solves our drug epidemic—but of course it still exists.

There’s another sign that the administration is playing loose with the facts. In the Pentagon’s latest bombing of an alleged drug-smuggling boat, two of the people onboard were rescued, briefly detained, then extradited to their home countries. This incident raises some interesting questions.

First, if the captured men really were drug smugglers, certainly if they were “terrorists,” the standard practice would have been to arrest them, and maybe send them to Guantanamo Bay or some other military prison. In this case, even a mediocre defense lawyer could have kept them out of jail, and probably even evaded a trial, because there was no evidence that they were drug smugglers; the evidence was on the boat, which (in Hegseth’s language) had been “smoked” to the bottom of the sea.

Once they get home, they will of course spread the news far and wide that they were just poor fishermen bombed or shelled by reckless American imperialists. In fact, they, as well as relatives of some of those killed, are claiming (truthfully or not) just that.

Second, and more intriguing still: Who rescued these guys? Was it someone from Special Forces or the Navy or a Coast Guard vessel that happened to be nearby? Certainly the good Samaritans must have known the two boatmen were not going to be put on trial, owing to lack of evidence. Was the rescue meant to demonstrate that something’s not quite right about this whole boat-bombing enterprise? Does it reflect a schism within the military over its propriety?

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It is worth noting, in this context, that Adm. Alvin Holsey, commander of U.S. Southern Command, which runs all military operations in that region (including the Caribbean), stepped down last week, after just one year on the job—the only time in recent memory that any flag officer has quit a command post so soon. A retired admiral, who is plugged in to ongoing activities, told me on background that Holsey had raised questions to top Pentagon officials about the legality of the boat-sinkings.

Was Holsey fired for raising those questions? Did he resign in quiet protest rather than follow orders that he saw as unlawful? The Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee want to call Holsey to testify; they need a couple of Republicans to support the effort. Will Trump, Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson block the move? Watch that space. Then again, maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe Holsey, who is Black, was canned because Hegseth figured he’d been promoted because of DEI. (It wouldn’t be the first time.)

These operations may have less to do with stopping drugs than with laying the groundwork for a war against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Trump has pretty much acknowledged that such a war has begun, admitting to reporters that the CIA is conducting “covert operations” against his regime—though admitting this publicly sort of takes the “c” out of “covert.”

Let’s be clear. Maduro is worth overthrowing. He is a brutal dictator. He at least condones, if not actively runs, drug-running operations. More to the point, he mounted a coup to retain political power after he was clearly defeated in an election. (The real winner, and now the leader of the democratic opposition, María Corina Machado, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and integrity. She publicly supports regime-change efforts and has praised Trump for leading the way.)

Still, if the idea of the mission is to restore law, order, and democracy, it should be done in orderly ways. (Even CIA covert operations have oversight procedures through the House and Senate leaders and the top members of the Select Committees on Intelligence.) Turning the Caribbean into a free-fire zone, “smoking” boats that might be carrying drugs (or doing so without revealing the evidence to that effect), and citing the need to halt drug smuggling (an electorally appealing issue) as an excuse to start a war, without explaining why such a war is in our national interest—this is the sort of prelude that leads up to a very bad war.


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Maduro is mobilizing his reserves to stave off an American invasion. He says that “millions” of Venezuelans are prepared for the fight—which is no doubt an exaggeration, but warning cries of an imminent foreign invasion are a familiar way for unpopular tyrants to shore up domestic support. And Maduro isn’t crying wolf. Besides acknowledging a CIA covert operation afoot, Trump has casually raised the possibility that he might indeed strike Venezuela by land.

Trump is still pissed that he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. He has complained about the loss to everybody he’s talked to lately—to the crowd of senior officers, to the Israeli Knesset, on his phone call with Vladimir Putin, his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky. If he wants to know why he lost, he should read the transcripts of what he’s been saying lately—about Venezuela, Colombia, and, while he’s at it, Portland and Chicago.

A peacemaker, which is what he says he wants to be, doesn’t talk so volubly and casually about making war, especially unnecessary wars—wars whose issues could be settled in other ways.