US President's 'War on Drugs' Finds a New, Sovereign Nation
The mainstream story hints at Donald Trump's hawkish posture towards Venezuela, detailing 'military strikes on suspected drug boats' in the Caribbean. A quick glance at the last century, however, reveals a consistent US playbook: demonize a left-leaning leader, impose crippling sanctions, and then use a convenient pretext—from communism to drugs—for interventions. President Reagan sent troops into
Grenada in 1983 over a perceived communist threat; President Bush Sr. invaded Panama in 1989 to depose Manuel Noriega, ostensibly for drug trafficking, after years of US support. It's less about drugs and more about oil and geopolitical alignment. So, when the Guardian frames Trump's actions as a novel 'war crime,' one might wonder where the 'war crime' discourse was for decades of similar, often
more violent, interventions by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Is it only a 'crime' if the president is out of favor with the establishment? Or perhaps, the true crime is the amnesia cultivated by a media that consistently presents each new iteration of US imperial aggression as an isolated incident, devoid of its violent, self-serving past.