Voices more closely connected to the U.S. military have emerged this week to raise their own questions about a spate of boat strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Western hemisphere carried out by the Trump administration since Sept. 2.
An anonymous Pentagon employee and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel have expressed concern that the focus on Latin American drug flows will affect American military might elsewhere in the world and lead to unintended consequences. That could include reducing co-operation with allies on the administration's goal of reducing U.S. fatalities from drug toxicity by throttling supply.
"The administration's legal framework is nonsense," a civilian employee of the Department of Defence wrote Tuesday in an op-ed for Gannett's Military Times website.
The administration is considering the drug cartels enemy combatants, equating them with Islamist terror organizations.
The comparison fails on multiple levels, the anonymous Pentagon employee wrote this week.
First, they said, the cartels generally lack the command structure of a terrorist organization. More importantly, unlike with terrorists, who often hide out in remote, secure locations around the world, the U.S.
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