Last weekend, Vice President JD Vance defended an attack on a Venezuelan boat that President Donald Trump said was carrying both illegal narcotics and members of the terrorist gang Tren de Aragua. The president posted a succinct description of the strike on social media.
“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,” Trump said on Truth Social. “No US Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.”
It appears from a video that the aircraft was strafing the vessel just before it exploded in flames. It is debatable whether Venezuela has been at war with the United States for decades, as it continues to be the source of much of the narcotics that are killing Americans. It is crystal clear that Tren de Aragua has been waging a terrorist war against the US in rural and urban America. Its thugs even took over parts of the small town of Aurora, CO, and literally controlled apartment blocks as they terrorized residents and extorted money from them.
We don’t know how many Tren de Aragua members illegally entered the US along with millions of others during the dark days of former President Joe Biden’s open southern border with Mexico. We know they were largely unmolested when they arrived and were welcomed with open arms by a broken immigration system that fed, clothed, and accommodated these monsters while many American veterans were starving in the streets.
Vance got right to the point with his posts.
“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
Earlier, Vance had stated the difference between the two parties in Congress over just how the US military should be used:
“Democrats: let’s send your kids to die in Russia. Republicans: actually, let’s protect our people from the scum of the earth.”
Some have criticized the attack, imagining it as an act of war against Venezuela or a violation of international law. But instead of fomenting and sustaining endless foreign wars in Europe and the Middle East, isn’t this a most appropriate use of American force?
Maybe that’s why Trump redesignated the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the name it had during two world wars, and when the military used to safeguard the border and dismantle threats in the Americas. In his farewell address, President George Washington urged Americans to avoid foreign entanglements and overseas wars. President James Monroe codified that policy with the Monroe Doctrine. President Theodore Roosevelt further amplified it with the Roosevelt Corollary, which allowed the US to retain the right to intervene in the Americas when national security was at risk.
Well, no one’s actually suggesting that the US Marines begin implementing regime change in Venezuela. But drugs have become an issue of national security because of the millions of people who have died as a result of their use and the other millions who have seen their lives destroyed, their livelihoods eroded, and their will to live nullified by the scourge of addiction.
Trump has seen the effects of addiction in his own family. He doesn’t want it to continue infecting the American way of life. He is prepared to take bold action to enforce that conviction.
Other presidents have talked about drug addiction, about how fentanyl has eviscerated entire communities. This is not just an inner-city problem; its tentacles have reached into large portions of rural America that are on life support today.
So we finally have a president who doesn’t just talk about America’s drug habit. He takes preventive measures to arrest the flow of drugs. The fentanyl epidemic is not going away because well-meaning citizens merely wish that it would go away. This is a war, and in a war, brutal action is sometimes necessary to defeat the enemy. The cartels in Mexico, Central America, and South America are waging war with America and killing Americans.
We should be rejoicing that one boatload of drugs was stopped from docking on American shores. We should expect and hope that there will be more.
And Americans are not the only ones who are cheerleading. There is growing support in countries like Venezuela and Mexico for the US to use its military against the cartels that control the economy and rule the government through their terrorism.
So, as Vance pointed out, we can lose our sons and daughters in other people’s wars, or we can stop the people who are killing our sons, daughters, husbands, and wives with deadly fentanyl.
President Trump is making the right choice.
