From Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush and greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with narcotics traffickers.

Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. This comes as he’s simultaneously ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities. It’s a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order.

In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to President Richard Nixon’s administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.

This is the prelude.

Transcript

Radley Balko: The United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges to be terrorists or insurgents. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Syria. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush’s war on terror and then was greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. But now President Donald Trump has taken the tactic to new extremes.

NBC: Moments ago, President Trump posted on social media that the U.S. military carried out a second strike targeting drug cartels.

CBS: This attack just two weeks after the military struck another boat from Venezuela in the Caribbean.

WPLG Local 10: The president says three narco-terrorists were killed, posting this video of the strike on Truth Social. The president saying, “Be warned — if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you.”

RB: Following Trump’s announcement of those strikes, the U.S. Navy took out another boat — a speedboat in which authorities in the Dominican Republic allege they confiscated 1,000 kilograms of cocaine.

The U.S. president is directing the full force of the U.S. military to kill alleged drug traffickers.

DT: We’re telling the cartels right now we’re going to stop them too. When they come by land, we’re going to stop them the same way we stopped the boats.

RB: And as Trump justifies this expanded role for the president as judge, jury, and executioner, he defines and casts villains, real or imagined, to fit his narrative.

DT: They killed 300,000 people in our country last year. And we’re not letting it happen anymore.

RB: Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. And this comes simultaneously as he’s ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities.

As Trump justifies this expanded role of judge, jury, and executioner, he defines and casts villains, real or imagined, to fit his narrative.

DT: What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within. …

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.

RB: It’s a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order.

From The Intercept, this is Collateral Damage: a podcast about the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself.

I’m Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years.

The so-called “war on drugs” began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country’s fervent commitment to defeating drug addiction, but the “war” part of that metaphor is now all too literal.

When the drug war ramped up in the 1980s and ’90s, it brought helicopters, tanks, and SWAT teams to U.S. neighborhoods. It brought dehumanizing rhetoric and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections.

All wars have collateral damage: the people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause.

But once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs, we were more willing to accept some collateral damage.

In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to the Nixon administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.

This is the prelude.

Once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs, we were more willing to accept some collateral damage.

Donald Trump has begun his second presidential term by unleashing aggressive, abusive immigration enforcement officers all over the country. Federal agencies from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE; Customs and Border Protection; Homeland Security Investigations; even the DEA and ATF are teaming up with local sheriffs and police.

KTLA: New video shows dozens of carwash workers being detained by federal agents including at least one customer.

WFLA: A Tampa family says they were roughed up and their home thrown into disarray by federal ICE agents and Homeland Security investigator.

WFLA: They just pointed guns at us in our face. They told us to open the door, if not they were going to break it down. They didn’t have no warrant.

RB: In some parts of the country, the administration has deployed federal troops, about 35,000 personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to reporting from The Intercept. In service of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, these forces operate now in at least five states.

One of the first places Trump sent troops was Los Angeles, California, to quell anti-ICE protests that had erupted in response to violent immigration raids.

FOX 11: About 700 U.S. Marines from the Second Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment out of Twentynine Palms received weekend orders and are on the way expected to arrive this morning. And although they’re trained for close combat, officials say these Marines won’t be on the front lines. Instead, they’ll be focused on crowd control.

RB: Trump’s mass deportation policy has many analogs to the drug war.

Richard Nixon: To the extent money can help in meeting the problem of dangerous drugs, it will be available. This is one area where we cannot have budget cuts because we must wage what I have called “total war” against public enemy No. 1 in the United States: the problem of dangerous drugs.

Trump’s mass deportation policy has many analogs to the drug war.

RB: The modern drug war began during President Richard Nixon’s administration and, like Trump’s fight against undocumented immigration, it was predicated on false claims designed to stir up fear and anger, particularly among white, middle- and low-income voters.

RN: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States.

RN: In recent years crime in this country has grown nine times as fast as population. At........

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