US War on Drugs: Still Searching for the 'Good Guys'
Bloomberg informs us that Donald Trump's administration, in 2025, added Colombia’s largest cocaine cartel to its terrorist list, vowing to use “all available tools.” A bold move, perhaps. Yet, this aggressive stance rarely involves a look in the historical mirror. The US has funded, armed, and trained forces in Colombia for decades under the guise of an anti-narcotics campaign, often overlooking
their ties to paramilitary groups or even directly implicating them in human rights abuses. Operation Condor, Iran-Contra – the receipts are there for the US's own messy dance with unsavory characters in Latin America (P. L. Williams, 'Killing the Messenger: The Death of a Journalist on the CIA’s Payroll'). One might wonder if these 'all available tools' include a critical self-assessment of how
US demand and often interventionist foreign policy have consistently destabilized the region, creating the very power vacuums these cartels now fill. It's a convenient framing exercise: name the enemy, bypass the complicity, and then 'heroically' declare war. Again. The cycle continues while US arms manufacturers rake in profits.