President Trump effectively claims that he is entitled to preemptively kill suspected drug traffickers anywhere on earth, or at least in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. military has killed hundreds of people in its attacks on suspected smugglers’ boats off the coast of South America.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proclaimed that illicit drugs are “tantamount to chemical weapons” and the dead suspects “are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda.”  Anyone whom the U.S. military killed is automatically posthumously designated a narco-terrorist.

If the U.S. government is entitled to summarily kill suspected drug traffickers abroad, there is no reason why the same prerogative would not eventually be invoked on the home front.  If politicians truly want to protect Americans, why not authorize the U.S. military, state police, and county government dog catchers to summarily attack any boat suspected of transporting drugs on the nation’s lakes, rivers, or overgrown puddles?

Politics_And_Law

![](https://m.stacker.news/146609)

By James Bovard

> President Trump effectively claims that he is entitled to preemptively kill suspected drug traffickers anywhere on earth, or at least in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. military has killed hundreds of people in its attacks on suspected smugglers’ boats off the coast of South America.

> Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proclaimed that illicit drugs are “tantamount to chemical weapons” and the dead suspects “are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda.”  Anyone whom the U.S. military killed is automatically posthumously designated a narco-terrorist.

> If the U.S. government is entitled to summarily kill suspected drug traffickers abroad, there is no reason why the same prerogative would not eventually be invoked on the home front.  If politicians truly want to protect Americans, why not authorize the U.S. military, state police, and county government dog catchers to summarily attack any boat suspected of transporting drugs on the nation’s lakes, rivers, or overgrown puddles?