COMMENTARY President Trump's specious assertion that trafficking deadly drugs into the U.S. constitutes war should also apply to deadly goods trafficked out of the U.S. — especially Florida guns.
If you’re a gun trafficker in South Florida, pal, you might want to start watching the sky above you for Trinidadian military drones.
You see, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, is understandably furious at the amount of drugs and especially weapons that are being smuggled to and through her Caribbean island nation — which last year recorded its highest-ever homicide rate and one of the world’s highest.
Last week Persad-Bissessar vented her anger by declaring all traffickers should be killed “violently” by military means.
She was of course inspired by the Trump administration’s announcement the day before that the U.S. military had blown up a suspected drug-trafficking boat coming out of Venezuela, killing all 11 alleged drug traffickers onboard.
President Donald Trump says he has the right to order such strikes on narco-vessels, because their transport of deadly drugs into U.S. communities constitutes an act of war.
Forget for a second that his logic likely violates international law. The point here is that, according to the Trump Doctrine, Persad-Bissessar can follow suit and militarily target the criminals who’ve declared war on Trinidad because they bring in AR-15 rifles and Glock pistols.
READ MORE: Should DeSantis send Florida's military to Haiti — to battle Florida's guns?
And the vast majority of the firearms flooding Trinidad and the Caribbean — three-fourths of them, in fact — come from the U.S., especially Florida, and more especially South Florida.
Which means, just as Trump has now sent eight U.S. warships and thousands of military personnel into the Caribbean to blast drug-runners into oblivion, Persad-Bissessar may now deploy Trinidad’s navy and air guard into international waters and airspace near Biscayne Bay to incinerate gun-runners.
What, you say? We can’t have foreign militaries blasting ships in our American seas and Cessnas in our American skies?
But those South Florida gun mules aren’t just criminals — they’re combatants engaged in warfare. Of course Trinidad’s military has the right to attack them if its intelligence says those boats and planes are loaded with ammo destined for street gangs in Port of Spain.
I mean, Trinidad obviously can’t rely on the U.S. justice system to curtail that plague — just as the U.S. can’t count on Latin American police institutions to interdict cocaine and fentanyl — so it’s got to use mortars instead of magistrates to get the job done, correct?
The Caribbean can’t rely on the U.S. justice system to curtail gun trafficking — so it’s got to use mortars instead of magistrates to get the job done, right?
And let’s just be glad Haiti’s military is too busy helping overwhelmed police there confront the murderous gangs that rule Port-au-Prince and much of the rest of the country — or else its assets, too, could be called near the South Florida coast to fire on gun traffickers.
In fact, Haiti’s got even more reason than Persad-Bissessar to be mad: its homicide rate is a third higher than Trinidad’s, thanks in no small part to the tsunami of U.S. and Florida weapons that helps gangs commit atrocities like the massacre of more than 40 Haitians in the fishing village of Labodrie last week.
Incorrigible snorting
But other Caribbean nations, from Jamaica to Barbados to St. Kitts and Nevis, have small but available military forces that might get a kick out of patrolling off Key West if it means they’ve got carte blanche to sink a gun-laden cigarette boat heading east.
While we’re at it, let’s pursue Trump’s reasoning further and conclude that it gives drug-producing countries like Colombia the right to wage war on drug-consuming countries like the U.S.
This week the Trump administration, for the first time in three decades, put Colombia on the U.S.’s list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war.
We can debate whether or not it was deserved: coca cultivation is in fact up again in Colombia — and leftist President Gustavo Petro hasn’t done his country any favors with his feckless calls to legalize cocaine.
One valid claim Petro does make, though, is that Colombia wouldn’t keep seeing rising levels of cocaine supply if cocaine demand didn’t keep rising in the U.S. Same goes for opioid use.
Yet the Trump administration wants to slash billions from drug addiction rehab programs.
Seems, then, that Bogotá can claim yanqui drug users are fair game for court martial execution, since their incorrigible snorting helps drive Colombia’s brutal cocaine cartel violence.
Does that mean Colombia’s military could rain missiles down on South Beach nightclubs?
Consult the Trump Doctrine.
