Murder In The Caribbean: The Trump Doctrine In Full Bloom

Trump's International Cover Up Off the Coast of Venezuela

Somewhere between the tacky furnishings and endless gold décor of the White House Oval Office, what used to be called decency has now been trampled yet again, this time by something even uglier: Donald J. Trump’s belief that sovereignty, restraint, and human life are optional luxuries.

Trump recently committed an act that ought to scandalize the very foundations of our nation. He ordered the murder of eleven souls in a boat off the coast of Venezuela.

Eleven human beings — perhaps criminals, perhaps not — were blown to pieces by American aircraft after their vessel turned around and attempted to retreat.

As first reported by the New York Times and now by other news organizations, yes, the people in the boat essentially ran.

They were leaving.

And yet the United States, under the ghoulish hand of Donald J. Trump’s second lunatic presidency, slaughtered them anyway.

According to multiple reports, instead of just one airstrike as Trump showed in his video posted on social media, the U.S. military struck the boat repeatedly to make sure everybody was incinerated.

The Trump team claims the victims were smuggling drugs. But when asked to show the evidence or intel, the administration keeps refusing and hiding behind “classified sources and methods.”

That never stopped Defense Secretary Hegseth from placing classified information from other military airstrikes on an unsecure signal chat.

But I digress.

Given the grainy images of the Venezuelan boat itself, the Trump claim about drug smuggling doesn’t even make sense.

The boat was a relatively small open-air vessel, powered by an outboard motor, filled with eleven people. Usually, drug smugglers want as much space as possible on boats, trucks, and airplanes for their product.

Eleven people take up a lot of space.

Relatedly, there are now claims from Venezuela that the human beings on board were not smugglers but rather refugees trying to escape that nation’s political violence for the safer confines of Trinidad.

Regardless of who was on the boat or why, the fact is that even in the murkiest waters of international conflict, there is no doctrine that allows for shooting fleeing people in their backs merely because one imagines they might be up to no good.

Killing those who are retreating? There is no purer form of state sanctioned tyranny.

And this was no accident.

The U.S. military knew the boat had already turned back. The pilots knew it. The analysts saw it. The radar confirmed it. Yet the order came: fire.

Eleven dead. No warning, no trial, no chance for a truce. Just smoldering corpses (or pieces) in saltwater and a message to the rest of the world – the United States is now judge, jury, and executioner and doesn’t give a damn whether you are guilty or not.

This is pure thuggery.

It’s what happens when the presidency is turned over to a fascist, wanna-be-dictator who views the Constitution as a scrap of soiled toilet paper and international law as an optional suggestion from those pesky, dirty neighbors.

Trump and his stooges, including Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth, keep bleating about “national defense” and” narco-terrorism,” and every other slogan their impotent speechwriters can pluck from the entrails of a Fox News chyron.

But make no mistake.

This was not a national defense operation.

This was not a war.

This was a political snuff film, a massacre designed to look tough on drugs and play well with the “bomb them all” MAGA crowd who see every brown person in a boat as a threat to our republic.

What kind of country drops bombs on people fleeing? What kind of government — civilized, democratic, even minimally sane — declares itself at war with a fishing boat and then opens fire after the boat turns tail?

What’s next? Airstrikes on jaywalkers? Drone executions for overdue library books?

And where are the patriots who once claimed to love liberty? The constitutionalists, the flag-humpers, the self-styled defenders of Western values?

They are hiding, as always, behind the empty slogan “America First,” which now means America Unhinged. America Unrestrained. America as the world’s most powerful and least accountable death cult.

If Trump wants to attack motorboats 2,700 miles from the continental United States and treat such vessels as enemy combatants and threats to the homeland, Old Man Orange should seek a declaration of war from Congress.

Take the argument about fentanyl poisoning tens of thousands of Americans and get U.S. lawmakers to somehow approve military strikes.

Then, give a warning to innocent fishermen off the coast of Miami. Because with all the narcotics smuggling boats nearby, those waters are going to get rough.

Of course, as of this writing, there has been no Trump effort to get Congressional approval for bombing motorboats and yachts. There has been no lobbying, hearings, or testimony.

All we’ve gotten, slurred out on TV and conservative cable news channel appearances, are Trump cliches about “lots of drugs.”

Perhaps Trump is projecting again. As for the attack on that Venezuelan boat, let’s not mince words. This was murder.

Not war.

Not justice.

Not even policy.

It was murder committed in our name and with our taxpayer dollars. It was a cold blooded mass killing by a Trump administration that mistakes cruelty for strength and annihilation for leadership.

And if we accept it — if we permit this butchery to be swept away by the next news cycle or drowned in the next Trump policy diversion, then we, too, are accessories to the savagery.

American citizens who do not rise in outrage are not citizens at all – just a herd, fattened for the next slaughter.

So here’s what must be done: First, there should be an immediate independent investigation, one that does not take at face value the administration’s self-justification.

Second, there must be legal proceedings against those who, without regard for law or life, ordered or carried out the attack.

Third, there must be an insistence from all of us, with every steely fiber of this nation, that no cause, however righteous we may imagine it, permits us to abandon our humanity.

To put it simply, we must do something. Because if these eleven deaths at sea aren’t enough to stir the soul of our nation, then God help us when the body count comes closer to home.