Earlier this week, a drug cartel boat was struck by United States missiles to tighten cartel crackdown efforts. Footage of the missile strike had surfaced online and became a massive focus of discussion among many including news sources and politicians.
According to Marco Rubio, who posted on X, “today the U.S. military conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.” While it’s good to crack down on drug related crime, it brings into question if it’s ethical to utilize military force to enforce the law when it would be more appropriate for organizations such as the DEA or FBI to handle situations such as this.
CBS news stated that “The strike came after the U.S. confirmed last month that the Navy would boost its presence near Venezuela, deploying three warships to the waters off the South American country as part of an anti-drug cartel mission. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called the ships an ‘extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat’ and deployed military forces to the country’s coastline, vowing to defend against any possible U.S. attack.”
Taking this into account and especially Trump’s recent efforts to place city law enforcement under federal regulation with militarized troops in cities such as New York City and Chicago, it becomes unclear where the line should be drawn or that they may have crossed it already to begin with. This recent effort to militarize law enforcement, is looking to be overkill as while it may be efficient in cracking down on crimes, it seems to do a lot of harm as well, as it seems rather controlling and tyrannical. If militaristic law enforcement becomes more widespread, it could become rather excessive and may even result in unnecessary deaths.
