The cost of fentanyl in the United States is stunning. Over the last decade, historian Victor Davis Hanson has noted that there are “more dead Americans from fentanyl than the total number of all U.S. soldiers lost in the wars of the twentieth century.” Overdose deaths were down in 2024, but in recent years, fentanyl and opioids (legal and illegal) have killed more than a hundred thousand Americans per year. Surely, something can be done.
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to do something. In 2024, he campaigned on cleaning up the problem, in part by the possibility of using the U.S. military against the drug cartels running the show south of the border — the ones that even target our Border Patrol agents with drones.
As much as his promises prompted cheers from his crowds at rallies, they provoked gasps and appeals to the law books from his critics.
For better or worse, Trump has always — and even more in his second term — concerned himself more with what gets done than how it happens. Results matter more than process or methods. Consider the source, but according to The New York Times, he’s taking more action in that vein: “President Trump has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations.”
Well, ask the dismayed legal experts, what about the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military for law enforcement actions? Trump says they are foreign terrorists, not criminals.
“In February,” adds the Times, “the State Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (known as MS-13) and several other groups as foreign terrorist organizations, saying that they constituted ‘a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime.’” The administration argues that this opens the door for using the military.
Predictably, Mexican socialist President Claudia Sheinbaum wants nothing to do with it. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion,” she asserted. It’s another story, but funny she should use that word.
Mexico isn’t the only problem, and Team Trump has also upped the ante on other nations.
“The Department of Justice and State Department are announcing a historic $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro,” Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Thursday. “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA (Tren de Aragua), Sinaloa, and Cartel of the Suns [Cartel de los Soles] to bring deadly violence to our country,” Bondi asserted. “He is one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the bounty and the reasons. “Maduro is not the President of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government,” he explained in a statement in July. “Maduro is the leader of the designated narco-terrorist organization Cartel de Los Soles, and he is responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe. Maduro, currently indicted by our nation, has corrupted Venezuela’s institutions to assist the cartel’s criminal narco-trafficking scheme into the United States.”
While there are legal questions, there is historical precedent for using the military to carry out operations against drug cartels. The Times notes, “In 1989, President George H.W. Bush sent more than 20,000 troops into Panama to arrest its strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking.”
Neither Bush nor his former boss, President Ronald Reagan, took the drug threat lightly. Trump is following in those footsteps rather than, say, Barack Obama, who launched a gun-running operation to send the cartels American firearms.
A final point, and one that somehow still gets lost on the Leftmedia: Trump often uses threats, orders, and actual moves as much as a negotiation tool as an ultimate solution. In other words, authorizing the military might be as much about sending a message as it is having U.S. soldiers actually apprehending cartel members.
