Yet but another stain on our nation

A riveting new documentary puts human lives and faces to the extrajudicial executions being carried out against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean. Americans should force themselves to watch this cataloging of what will surely be remembered as a historic stain on our nation.

When it comes to feeling ashamed of our nation’s actions over the past year and a half, there exists a disturbingly long list of top contenders. Providing weapons and intelligence to support a Palestinian genocide committed by an “ally” who is simultaneously abetting the settlement horrors in the West Bank? Using untested AI for military targeting, leading to the double tap of a school building that saw more than a hundred little schoolgirls in Iran murdered? Causing an incalculable number of deaths by pulling food and medical aid from some of the most impoverished corners of the world so that we can better afford more tax cuts for billionaires?

It’s telling that you have to get pretty far down the list before nuking the global economy via hamfisted tariff policies and an illegal war of choice or threatening the sovereignty of multiple allies feels commensurate. But one series of war crimes that has not gotten enough attention, in my opinion, are the extrajudicial killings broadcast by our government through Operation Southern Spear, an illegal attempt to combat drug trafficking through airstrikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

You’ve heard the rhetoric. You’ve seen the grainy videos. You heard former Attorney General Pam Bondi laughably tell President Trump during one of his cabinet humiliation rituals that blowing up all those little fishing boats incapable of reaching the U.S. from countries that do not export Fentanyl to our country saved 258 million lives—approximately three out of four American men, women, and children.

During the first known strike, the United States committed a blatant war crime by hitting a ship, and rather than attempt to save and capture the two shipwrecked "alleged" narco-traffickers, U.S. forces simply blew them up because we're apparently really leaning into that whole illegal double-tap thing. Without offering any proof that these small fishing vessels were transporting drugs to the U.S., we have sentenced at least 230 human beings working on them to death without a trial.

In a nation in which our personal liberties are predicated on the notion that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, the idea that we can allow someone as sinfully immoral as Pete Hegseth to be judge, jury, and executioner (particularly when it comes to non-Caucasions, for whom he has shown particular disdain) suggests a rot at our core that will not easily be exorcised, even if that man should get his comeuppance someday while standing before the Hague.

Fentanyl is a deadly drug that mostly arrives here from Mexican cartels, via precursors supplied by China. The administration has not only failed to show any evidence that Fentanyl is being trafficked by Venezuela or Colombia—or smaller countries like Ecuador and St. Lucia or Trinidad and Tobago that have had boats blown up—but its own agencies have contradicted the assertion.

Normally, the most charitable take you can have when it comes to our inept President is that he does not understand the matter and is insulated by such a small echo chamber of sycophants afraid to contradict his instinctive response, ie., tariffs and interest rates/inflation. But that’s not possible in this instance. Trump clearly does not care about drug trafficking. If he did, he would not have pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández.

Hernández was convicted in U.S. federal court for using the Honduran government and its police and military resources to protect traffickers who moved more than 400 tons of cocaine to the United States, after accepting millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers, including the Sinaloa cartel. In fact, Hernández was caught on tape declaring, "We're going to shove these drugs right up the noses of the gringos." What’s the number one manner in which Americans accidentally overdose on Fentanyl? When it’s used to cut cocaine.

Trump claimed he didn’t know Hernández or anything about the case other than someone he respected very much told him the former Honduran president had been treated "very harshly and unfairly," later describing the prosecution as a Biden-administration "setup." That person was likely Trump mega-donor, Palantir co-founder, JD Vance benefactor, and close confidant to Jeffrey Epstein, Mr. Peter Thiel.

Thiel worked out some sort of deal with then-president Hernández to attempt to realize his decades-long dream of establishing a techno-crypto city. The Honduran experiment, known as Próspera, failed miserably. Theil, a self-styled expert on the Biblical antichrist, and his techno-fascist buddies are reportedly considering Argentina, after efforts in New Zealand apparently fell through.

Hernández is reported to be living large back in Honduras since receiving the pardon from Trump, who also commuted the sentence of his golf club buddy, Jonathan Braun, who was convicted of narcotics trafficking and money laundering after getting caught smuggling some 220,000 pounds of marijuana from Canada to the U.S.

Clearly, Trump is, to say the least, flexible when it comes to handling alleged drug crimes. If you’re rich, well connected, and can do something for him or his donors, you get a pass, even when you’ve been convicted on solid evidence. If you are an impoverished fisherman for whom every day at sea is a struggle to feed your desperate family, he’ll order you blown up without even offering a shred of evidence, let alone a trial to prove your innocence.

Watch the documentary below. Hear their stories. Feel the pain of their families. Vote accordingly.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch's new novel, Fish Kill, is currently available here, along with his previous books. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.