Good on Trump for targeting Venezuelan narco-terrorists who work with dictator Nicolas Maduro

After years of seeing American blood and treasure spent making faraway parts of the world safer, President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are using our might to neutralize drug smuggling in our hemisphere. 

Boats carrying deadly drugs are being vaporized by Reaper drones on a seemingly weekly basis.

This is America First foreign policy in action.

Every boat out of Venezuela that our Reaper drones destroy is carrying poison that would destroy families and communities. 

The response to this operation from the Venezuelan government has been telling. Its leaders haven’t thanked American for eliminating narco-terrorists or offering to help.

Instead, they’ve issued condemnations and denials that these boats are full of drugs. 

That’s because we’ve been killing their colleagues. 

Venezuela is a narco-state, a cartel masquerading as a government.

The United States, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago have all recognized that the Cartel of the Suns, a drug-trafficking organization helmed by Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military, is a designated terrorist organization. 

The moniker — Cartel of the Suns — refers to the sun insignias worn on the uniforms of high-ranking officers in the Venezuelan military.

The cartel has provided security to protect cocaine shipments, participated in the smuggling of drugs, armed the Colombian terrorist organization FARC and earned millions in illicit proceeds.

The Justice Department alleges that in 2006, when Maduro was foreign minister, he received $5 million in drug proceeds from the FARC.

Maduro isn’t just getting rich off of trafficking drugs; he is using drugs as a weapon against Americans. 

In 2020, the United States unveiled an indictment against Maduro for drug-trafficking.

The indictment revealed that, under Maduro’s leadership, the Cartel of the Suns “sought not only to enrich its members and enhance their power, but also to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in this country.”

The indictment noted that they “prioritized using cocaine as a weapon against America and importing as much cocaine as possible into the United States.”

Likewise, an eye-opening file in the prosecution against Hugo Carvajal — a former Venezuelan general who pleaded guilty this summer to charges of cocaine-trafficking — reveals that Carvajal viewed the drug as a “weapon to use against ‘gringos’ so they die.”

These are the actions of a hostile state. It would be an abdication of President Trump’s duty to allow Venezuela to continue to peddle drugs without consequence.

His administration increased the bounty on Nicolás Maduro to $50 million, and the FBI recently indicted two men for laundering Maduro’s millions.

More Americans have died from overdoses in recent years than died in bloody conflicts such as Vietnam.

President Trump campaigned on targeting the threat of drug cartels with the same vigor that past presidents targeted distant nations for unnecessary regime change. 

He’s delivering on that promise. It’s incumbent upon my fellow senators to support the president on his mission to eradicate drug cartels.

The Senate recently rejected a resolution meant to handcuff the president’s ability to target narco-traffickers coming out of Venezuela.

A few conservatives have shown concern that this fight against narco-trafficking could devolve into a protracted conflict.

To them, I say: Trust Trump.

The president has repeatedly shown — as recently as this summer in Iran — that while he is willing to use military force to further our national interest, he is careful to ensure we do not get stuck into a quagmire.

This is a military operation that is significantly more tied to America’s core interests than many of the foreign excursions to which DC has given its fulsome support.

Maduro isn’t simply a socialist who ruined Venezuela’s economy; he is peddling drugs that kill our neighbors. He must be stopped.

Jim Banks (R) represents Indiana in the US Senate.