In Early October, Secretary Of War Mike Hegseth Announced That American Naval Forces Had Sunk Yet Another Boat Off The Coast Of Venezuela. This Was The Latest In A Series Of Such Attacks.
The vessel was suspected of trying to ship illegal drugs to the United States. This episode was just the latest in a series of such attacks.
There are several problems with Washington’s official justification regarding this and earlier incidents.
Once again, American officials provided no evidence that this targeted vessel was actually carrying drugs, much less that they were headed for the United States.
DONALD TRUMP’S BIG MISTAKE
Not only does such conduct violate international law, but the attacks also make a mockery of crucial American legal principles.
In essence, Donald Trump has built upon some of the ugliest precedents set over the decades during either Washington’s much-hyped “war on drugs” or the equally inflammatory “war on terror.”
Indeed, Trump has combined the most odious practices of the two “wars” into an especially toxic brew that now poses a mortal threat to the basic legal rights of both Americans and foreign populations.
As with so many of the civil liberties abuses that the Trump administration is committing, the current policy team did not invent those practices; it simply has utilized and expanded earlier precedents.
The war on drugs led to the massive militarization of America’s domestic law enforcement already by the 1980s and 1990s. The creation and proliferation of heavily armed SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units epitomized that ominous change.
SWAT teams resembled in all meaningful respects military combat forces rather than conventional law enforcement personnel.
Their tactics also aped those of their military compatriots. For example, it became standard operating procedure for SWAT teams to conduct raids on residences in the early morning hours to shock and intimidate suspects who were awakened from a sound sleep.
All too often, that procedure has led to tragedy as armed residents concluded that their home was being invaded and proceeded to exercise their Second Amendment rights to self-defense.
The infamous Breonna Taylor case in which an innocent young woman perished when she was caught in a crossfire between her boyfriend and heavily armed police was a prominent example of the unhealthy consequences of the militarization of law enforcement to wage the war on drugs.
The abuses resulting from the war on terror have been even more corrosive to fundamental civil liberties and the rule of law. The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9-11 attacks in especially frightening and damaging ways. Not only did Bush and his successors use the episode to justify launching wars against multiple countries—including some (e.g., Iraq) that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, they greatly expanded an already worrisome surveillance apparatus here and abroad run by American intelligence agencies. Trump already is giving every indication that he intends to expand that practice.
DUE PROCESS STANDARDS CHALLENGES
Another alarming feature of the war on terror was the severe erosion of due process standards.
Nearly 1,200 suspects in the 9-11 attacks were rounded up and sent to prison camps in the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other dark sites.
Months (and in some cases years) passed as those accused parties were held without formal charges—much less, fair trials.
Even worse, many of those individuals were subjected to torture—or the euphemism favored by American policymakers, “enhanced interrogation.”
One of the especially disheartening experiences was the response that often happened when those practices were condemned . “Terrorists are not entitled to due process rights,” was the typical phrasing. That assertion was factually wrong, but even worse was the increasingly pervasive failure to make any distinction between accused terrorists and people convicted of that offense. Instead, the implicit doctrine of accusation equals guilt came to dominate the thinking of even normally sensible Americans.
Hidden History -- In The Making 