admin
The United States took decisive action this month when it conducted a precision strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that officials say was carrying a large shipment of narcotics and members of a cartel-linked Venezuelan gang, a move that reportedly killed 11 people aboard. This was not a reckless act but a targeted response to an existential threat — cartel networks are flooding our streets with fentanyl and other poisons and the federal government has a duty to stop them before they kill more Americans.
The administration has made clear it will no longer tolerate business-as-usual interdictions that only slow the traffickers by a few percentage points; leaders including Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued the strike was necessary to send a deterrent message and that softer tactics have failed. When smugglers treat international waters as a highway for death, America must be willing to break that highway and hold the traffickers accountable.
There will be predictable handwringing from the usual suspects who call for restraint while our communities drown in overdoses, and they point to murky intelligence about the precise command-and-control links between gangs and foreign regimes. Some reporting has noted a declassified assessment suggesting Caracas may not directly control certain gangs, but uncertainty does not excuse inaction when clear and present danger to Americans exists. We can debate finer legal points later, but the mission right now is to stop poison from reaching our children.
Of course the left and human-rights commentators have denounced the operation as an “extrajudicial” act and questioned its legality, underscoring the double standard in Washington politics where virtue-signaling trumps saving lives. Let them talk; meanwhile parents in communities ravaged by fentanyl want results, not lectures on process from coastal elites who have grown comfortable letting death roll ashore. If critics truly cared about life, they would demand the same ferocity we show against foreign terrorists.
President Trump and his national security team have openly framed this as the beginning of a broader campaign to dismantle cartel logistics at sea and on land, and they should be applauded for turning words into action rather than endless reports and photo-ops. The message must be unmistakable: if you run a network that kills Americans with illegal drugs, you will be hunted and your supply lines destroyed; soft-on-crime experiments have failed and it is past time for results.
This is a moment for Congress and the states to stand with the administration and fund real tools to win the war on drugs — more Coast Guard cutters, better border security, and uncompromising cooperation with regional partners who want to stop the traffickers. Patriots who value life and liberty should demand policy that protects families, backs law enforcement, and strips the cartels of the freedom to operate; anything less is a betrayal of the American public.
