There are plenty of accusations you could level at Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, the ex-union leader and bus driver, whose corruption and incompetence is steering the economy of his oil-rich Latin American nation off a cliff. But responsibility for America’s lethal drug habit is not one of them. That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump trying, however.

‘We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,’ Hegseth bragged

Thus, we’ve seen Trump’s doltish ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth gleefully bombing small Venezuelan boats that he claims were carrying drug smugglers.

‘We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,’ Hegseth bragged after the first sinking on 3 September. He failed to offer any evidence there were drugs or smugglers onboard. Military law experts note that even if the boat’s occupants were guilty as charged, that did not make them terrorists. US special forces have since sunk another seven vessels.

Quite apart from the dubious legality and ethics of the campaign, it won’t make a bit of difference in America’s disastrous and unending war on drugs. The proportion of narcotics entering the US via Venezuela is relatively tiny. 

The small boat sunk off the Venezuelan coast probably wasn’t carrying fentanyl to the United States, as Trump claims, anyway. Fentanyl typically arrives in the US by land from Mexico. Its precursors are made in China. Will US special forces be attacking chemical factories in China? Presumably not.

The Trump administration knows all this.........

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