“If you’re in our hemisphere, if you’re in the Caribbean, if you’re north of Venezuela and you want to traffic drugs to the United States, you are a legitimate target of the United States military,” in an interview with Fox News’s The Sunday Briefing.
“We have every authorization needed. These are designated as foreign terrorist organizations,” Hegseth insisted. Two days ago another boat of “narco-terrorists” was bombed in the Caribbean under Hegseth’s direction.
This is all comes under the rubric of “fighting terrorism” as authorized after 9/11.
This is how the Trump Administration is ramping up the War on Drugs, a preoccupation of both major political parties and the federal government in the 20th century.
The previous Tuesday, Hegseth had made waves denying to women any easier physical qualification standard to get in the military, demanding a return to pre-2015 qualification standards. And advised his audience of big brass that just as rank-and-file military personnel should be fit, so too should U.S. generals and admirals not be fat.
At least that, we can hazard, is a constitutionally fit and proper — fully authorized — judgment of the Secretary of, er, Defense.