With 14 people killed in the Caribbean in recent days by US forces at the direction of President Donald Trump, two Democratic senators on Friday moved to stop the Trump administration from continuing military strikes against boats that it claims are involved in drug trafficking. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced a joint resolution calling for the US to stop…

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  • whiskers165 [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    This is kind of burying the lede. The real story is Republicans are working on something like what the AUMF (authorisation for use of military force) is for the war terror for their proposed international war on drug trafficking.

    If this comes to fruition they could expand their war from international waters and start bombing suspected cartel strongholds in Mexico or drone striking anyone in the Western Hemisphere they claim is an international drug smuggler.

    They would like to bring the War on Terror as we wage it in West Asia and Africa to our home in the Americas. I know we already don’t treat Latin America well but it sounds like we’re trying to do it even worse.

    Power and control reflect fear among men

    On Friday, reporting by The New York Times suggested that Republican lawmakers and the White House are working to grant the administration the legal authority to continue the strikes.

    A draft bill is circulating around the White House and Congress to grant the president the power to order military strikes to carry out “the drug trafficking war.”

    The authority would last for five years, and longer if renewed by Congress, and would cover groups that the administration has designated terrorist organizations as well as nations that harbor those groups.

    Jack Goldsmith, a former George W. Bush administration official and a Harvard Law School professor, told the Times that the legislation is “insanely broad.”

    “This is an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations, and persons that the president could deem within its scope,”