More than a year later, Team Trump’s boat strikes continue to fail on multiple fronts

The Trump administration's campaign of military strikes on civilian boats in international waters has not stopped drug smuggling, even as the White House keeps presenting it as a triumph. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal indicates traffickers have adapted: in the Amazon they now move cargo by boat along river networks, and off Colombia they hug the coastline in the same type of speedboat the U. S. military targets. Law-enforcement officials on four continents told the paper that cocaine is arriving in record volumes in the United States, Europe and Australia, and that it is cheaper and purer than it has been in decades, according to MS NOW.

President Donald Trump nonetheless told the United Nations last month that dozens of strikes had wiped out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by sea. MS NOW's Steve Benen argues the evidence of recent months contradicts that, since many people have died and many vessels been destroyed while narcotics still reach American shores. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the country cannot bomb its way out of a drug crisis and called for law enforcement to take the lead.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →