Donald Trump’s ‘Combo War’ on Terror and Drugs Is Out of Control

Trump Combines Abuses of the Drug War and the War on Terror

In early October, Secretary of War Mike Hegseth announced that U.S. naval forces had sunk yet another boat off the coast of Venezuela.

Trump Speaking Outside White House. Image Credit: The White House.

The vessel was suspected of trying to ship illegal drugs to the United States. This episode was just the latest in a series of such attacks.

There are several problems with Washington’s official justification regarding this and earlier incidents.

Once again, U.S. officials provided no evidence that this targeted vessel was actually carrying drugs, much less that they were headed for the United States.

Donald Trump’s Big Mistake 

Not only does such conduct violate international law, but the attacks also make a mockery of crucial U.S. legal principles.

In essence, Donald Trump has built upon some of the ugliest precedents set over the decades during either Washington’s much-hyped “war on drugs” or the equally inflammatory “war on terror.”

Indeed, Trump has combined the most odious practices of the two “wars” into an especially toxic brew that now poses a mortal threat to the basic legal rights of both Americans and foreign populations.

As with so many of the civil liberties abuses that the Trump administration is committing, the current policy team did not invent those practices; it simply has utilized and expanded earlier precedents.

The war on drugs led to the massive militarization of America’s domestic law enforcement already by the 1980s and 1990s. The creation and proliferation of heavily armed SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units epitomized that ominous change.

SWAT teams resembled in all meaningful respects military combat forces rather than conventional law enforcement personnel.

Their tactics also aped those of their military compatriots. For example, it became standard operating procedure for SWAT teams to conduct raids on residences in the early morning hours to shock and intimidate suspects who were awakened from a sound sleep.

All too often, that procedure has led to tragedy as armed residents concluded that their home was being invaded and proceeded to exercise their Second Amendment rights to self-defense.

The infamous Breonna Taylor case in which an innocent young woman perished when she was caught in a crossfire between her boyfriend and heavily armed police was a prominent example of the unhealthy consequences of the militarization of law enforcement to wage the war on drugs.

The abuses resulting from the war on terror have been even more corrosive to fundamental civil liberties and the rule of law. The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9-11 attacks in especially frightening and damaging ways. Not only did Bush and his successors use the episode to justify launching wars against multiple countries—including some (e.g., Iraq) that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, they greatly expanded an already worrisome surveillance apparatus here and abroad run by U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump already is giving every indication that he intends to expand that practice.

Due Process Standards Challenges 

Another alarming feature of the war on terror was the severe erosion of due process standards.

Nearly 1,200 suspects in the 9-11 attacks were rounded up and sent to prison camps in the U.S military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other dark sites.

Months (and in some cases years) passed as those accused parties were held without formal charges—much less, fair trials.

Even worse, many of those individuals were subjected to torture—or the euphemism favored by U.S. policymakers, “enhanced interrogation.”

One of my especially disheartening experiences was the response that I often received when I condemned those practices. “Terrorists are not entitled to due process rights,” was the typical phrasing. That assertion was factually wrong, but even worse was the increasingly pervasive failure to make any distinction between accused terrorists and people convicted of that offense.  Instead, the implicit doctrine of accusation equals guilt came to dominate the thinking of even normally sensible Americans I encountered.

The Present Day Challenge: a Toxic Standard 

Trump has embraced that toxic standard and is now applying it to boat operators in the Caribbean suspected of shipping illegal drugs to the United States. For Trump and other administration officials, the mere suspicion of involvement in drug running is sufficient to justify being targeted in a U.S. military assault.

There is no need for due process, much less a fair trial.  Indeed, there apparently is no need for congressional authorization either.  Trump acts as though he believes the president can do anything he considers necessary for the defense of the United States.

Such a mentality highlights a president who is dangerously out of control. Again however, Trump’s individual actions are not all that unique.  It is his combination of multiple horrible precedents that other White House occupants set that is so worrisome.  Trump did not create the war on drugs; Richard Nixon did, and many of the actual practices existed during even earlier administrations.  Moreover, Nixon’s successors, Republicans and Democrats alike, continued and in some cases even expanded the crusading initiatives he launched.

Likewise, Trump did not invent the war on terror.  Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, sought to have a “war on terrorism” become a major component of U.S. foreign policy.  We wrangled about the idea on several occasions.  George W. Bush was perhaps the most renowned and insistent advocate of a war on terror.  U.S. military forces have launched literally tens of thousands of aerial assaults on “suspected” terrorist targets in multiple countries around the world.

There have been brazen violations of civil liberties, including the constitutional rights of American citizens in the process.  Barack Obama ordered the assassination of prominent accused terrorist Anwar Al-Awlaki. A subsequent drone attack killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, his 16 year old son—even though there was no credible evidence that the younger Awlaki was involved in such violence.

None of those previous episodes excuse in any way Trump’s current or planned abuses.  However, it’s not only useful to acknowledge that these and other ugly practices of the imperial presidency did not emerge overnight, it is essential to do so.  Indeed, that recognition must be the first step in a concerted bipartisan effort to prevent Trump from bequeathing an even more worrisome rogue presidency on steroids to his successors.

About the Author: Ted Galen Carpenter 

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a contributing editor at The National Security Journal and The American Conservative.  He is the author of 13 books and more than 1,500 articles on national security, international affairs, and civil liberties.  His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).