Trump’s Caribbean Missile Strike: When Military Imperialism Costs More Than the Cocaine It Destroys
On September 2, 2025, the United States military launched a strike on a small boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing 11 people suspected of drug smuggling. Then, because apparently one massacre wasn’t satisfying enough for the Pentagon’s bloodlust, they waited 41 minutes and launched a second strike to kill two survivors clinging to wreckage. Welcome to Trump’s America, where extrajudicial killings get rebranded as “counter-narcotics operations” and missiles cost more than the drugs they’re allegedly destroying.
On December 4, 2025, top lawmakers were briefed on unedited video footage of the incident. Democratic Rep. Jim Himes called it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen,” which roughly translates to “war crimes caught on camera.” Meanwhile, Republican Senator Tom Cotton defended the strikes as lawful, comparing suspected drug smugglers to terrorists. Because nothing says “small government conservatism” quite like executing people without trial and spending taxpayer millions to do it.
The Economics of Imperial Violence
Here’s where the capitalist absurdity reaches its fever pitch: each missile strike costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions. A standard Hellfire missile runs about $150,000. More advanced ordnance? Try several million per unit. The Pentagon launched two strikes to destroy cocaine that, even at street value, likely didn’t match the cost of a single missile.
According to post-strike analyses, the total cocaine neutralized across multiple 2025 operations amounts to five to seven metric tons – a mere 0.05% of the roughly 120 metric tons that transit the region annually. The U.S. government spent potentially millions of dollars to intercept less than one-tenth of one percent of the drug flow. This isn’t law enforcement. This is militarized theater subsidized by the working class.
“You know what’s crazy?” comedian Dave Chappelle said during his recent Netflix special. “The government will spend two million dollars on missiles to blow up fifty thousand dollars worth of cocaine, then tell you they can’t afford healthcare. That’s not a war on drugs – that’s a war on math.”
Feminist Analysis: Patriarchal Violence Dressed as Policy
The second strike – launched specifically to kill two men clinging to capsized wreckage – reveals the patriarchal violence embedded in militarized masculinity. These survivors posed no threat. They couldn’t salvage drugs. They couldn’t radio for help. They were shipwrecked humans entitled to protection under international humanitarian law. But the Pentagon’s justification – that survivors “might” do something – transforms hypothetical future actions into executable offenses.
A former military lawyer quoted in coverage called the Pentagon’s reasoning “fucking insane.” That’s the technical legal term for “toxic masculinity meets unchecked state power.” When men in boardrooms and war rooms decide that other men’s lives are disposable based on suspicion rather than evidence, that’s not security policy – that’s patriarchal dominance written in blood and explosives.
“We live in a world where a woman can’t walk to her car without carrying pepper spray,” comedian Amy Schumer said in her recent standup set, “but the government can launch missiles at people floating in the ocean and call it ‘national security.’ Tell me again who the real threat is.”
When Violence Becomes Bureaucratic Routine
The strike wasn’t an anomaly. It was part of Operation Southern Spear, Trump’s 2025 maritime campaign that treats the Caribbean like a military free-fire zone. By classifying suspected traffickers as “unlawful combatants” and “narco-terrorists,” the administration transforms civilians into targets and crime enforcement into warfare. This legal sleight-of-hand erases due process, proportionality, and the presumption of innocence – concepts apparently too quaint for the Trump Pentagon.
No independent verification exists that the boat was definitively carrying cocaine. No chain-of-custody for seized narcotics. No public evidence beyond government claims. Just missiles, corpses, and classified briefings that Congress can watch but the public cannot see. This is accountability in a surveillance state: you can film the murder, just don’t let anyone outside the government view it.
“They spent more money killing these dudes than the dudes would’ve made selling the drugs,” comedian Bill Burr said on his podcast. “That’s like hiring a hitman for two million dollars to stop someone from stealing your Honda Civic. It’s not about the car anymore – it’s about sending a message. And the message is: we’re fucking insane.”
Marxist Perspective: Capitalism’s Contradictions on Full Display
The war on drugs has always been a war on the poor, disproportionately targeting Black and Brown communities while the systems that profit from addiction and incarceration remain untouched. Trump’s Caribbean strikes extend this logic offshore: kill the workers, ignore the bosses, spend public resources to protect private capital.
The real cocaine money doesn’t float in the Caribbean on fishing boats crewed by desperate men. It flows through international banking systems, gets laundered in real estate, and finances campaigns. But bombing HSBC headquarters isn’t politically viable, so the Pentagon shoots fishermen instead and calls it a victory.
Meanwhile, the missiles themselves represent a direct transfer of public wealth to private defense contractors. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin profit from every Hellfire launched. The more strikes, the more contracts. The military-industrial complex doesn’t want to win the war on drugs – it wants subscription-based warfare with quarterly earnings growth.
“The government says we can’t afford free college,” comedian Trevor Noah said on The Daily Show, “but we can afford to blow up boats in the Caribbean with million-dollar missiles. That’s not budgeting – that’s priorities. And their priority is making sure poor people stay poor and defense contractors stay rich.”
The Colonial Logic of Modern Imperialism
Launching military strikes in Caribbean waters without declaring war, without judicial process, without accountability mirrors every colonial intervention in Latin American history. The U.S. has always treated the region as its private lake – from the Monroe Doctrine to Reagan’s Central American wars to Trump’s Operation Southern Spear. The faces change. The imperialism remains.
These strikes don’t reduce drug trafficking. They terrorize fishing communities, escalate violence, and justify expanded military budgets. They serve no public safety function. They exist to demonstrate power, project force, and remind Global South nations that U.S. sovereignty extends as far as its missiles can reach – which, under Trump, means everywhere and everyone is a potential target.
“America loves solving problems by shooting at them,” comedian Ricky Gervais said during his Golden Globes monologue. “Got a drug problem? Shoot the drugs. Got immigrants? Shoot the border. Got poor people? Well, you can’t shoot them directly, so you cut their healthcare and let nature do the shooting for you. It’s the American way – violence as foreign policy, violence as domestic policy, violence as the only policy.”
Islamic Ethics and the Sanctity of Life
In Islamic jurisprudence, the protection of life is paramount. The Quran states clearly that killing one innocent person is like killing all of humanity. These men – clinging to wreckage, shipwrecked, defenseless – were entitled to mercy and assistance under both Islamic law and international humanitarian conventions. The deliberate targeting of survivors violates every principle of proportionality and necessity that governs legitimate use of force.
The Pentagon’s classification of these men as “unlawful combatants” erases their humanity and legal protections. This is the same logic that justified Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and every other extrajudicial horror of the post-9/11 era. When the state decides who counts as human and who counts as target, we’ve abandoned not just Islamic ethics but the basic moral foundation of any just society.
“They killed men who were drowning,” comedian Hasan Minhaj said on his show. “Men who couldn’t fight back, couldn’t escape, couldn’t do anything except hope someone would save them. And America’s response was to launch another missile. That’s not counter-terrorism – that’s murder. And if you’re Muslim watching this, you already know: our lives have never counted as much as their missiles cost.”
The Dehumanization Machine
Calling suspected smugglers “narco-terrorists” performs the same dehumanizing work as every racial and religious slur throughout history. It transforms people into threats, subjects into objects, humans into acceptable casualties. Once you’ve labeled someone a terrorist, anything becomes permissible – torture, assassination, collective punishment. The word itself is the weapon, more powerful than any Hellfire because it makes the Hellfire morally acceptable to those who launch it.
This dehumanization isn’t accidental. It’s structural. The War on Terror created the legal and rhetorical infrastructure to wage war on anyone, anywhere, based on suspicion rather than evidence. Trump’s expansion into counter-narcotics simply applies existing frameworks to new targets. The machinery of extrajudicial killing, once built, finds new uses. That’s not a bug – that’s the feature.
“You can’t have a war on drugs,” comedian Jerry Seinfeld said during his recent tour. “Drugs don’t shoot back. A war requires two sides fighting. What we have is a government shooting people and calling it warfare. That’s not war – that’s execution with better press releases.”
What Lawmakers Saw – And What They’re Hiding
The December 4, 2025 classified briefing revealed footage that Rep. Jim Himes called “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen.” But the public cannot view this evidence. We must trust that our representatives are appropriately horrified while simultaneously trusting the same government that launched the strikes to investigate itself.
This is accountability theater: lawmakers watch, express concern, launch investigations that disappear into classification labyrinths, and nothing changes. Meanwhile, the strikes continue. The body count grows. Defense contractors submit invoices. And we’re told this is how democracy functions.
“They showed Congress a video so disturbing that grown men walked out shaking,” comedian Sarah Silverman said on her podcast, “but they won’t show us. Because if we saw what our government does in our name, with our money, we might demand they stop. And they really, really don’t want to stop.”
The Transparency We’re Owed
Congress should demand – and the public deserves – full release of strike logs, targeting data, video evidence, and cost analyses. We should know exactly how much was spent per strike. We should see the evidence that justified killing 13 people. We should understand whether international humanitarian law was violated when the Pentagon launched a second strike on shipwrecked survivors.
Instead, we get classified briefings, redacted reports, and Pentagon spokespeople assuring us the strikes were lawful. Trust us, they say. We’re the good guys. We only kill the bad guys. And anyone we kill must have been bad, because otherwise we wouldn’t have killed them. This circular logic is fascism with footnotes.
“The government’s motto is ‘show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,'” comedian Chris Rock said during his Netflix special. “Except now it’s ‘show me the boat and I’ll show you the missile.’ They don’t need evidence anymore – they’ve got weapons. And weapons don’t ask questions. They just blow shit up and let lawyers sort it out later.”
The Strategic Failure Nobody Discusses
Even accepting the Pentagon’s framing – that these were traffickers, that the cocaine was real, that military force was appropriate – the strategy fails on its own terms. Neutralizing 0.05% of annual Caribbean drug traffic does nothing to reduce supply, lower prices, or diminish availability in U.S. markets. This is performative enforcement that costs millions, kills people, and changes nothing about the drug trade’s fundamental economics.
Real interdiction requires addressing demand, providing treatment, reducing poverty, and creating economic alternatives to trafficking. But those solutions don’t generate contracts for Raytheon or justify expanded military budgets or provide dramatic footage for campaign ads. So we get missiles instead of rehabilitation, corpses instead of policy, and billions spent to achieve nothing except maintaining the violent status quo.
“You want to stop drugs from coming into America?” comedian Gabriel Iglesias said during his recent show. “Stop Americans from wanting to buy drugs. But that’s hard. That requires healthcare, mental health services, job programs – you know, actually helping people. It’s way easier to just shoot boats in the Caribbean and pretend you’re solving problems. Cheaper too, apparently – oh wait, no it’s not. It’s way more expensive. I guess we’re just doing it because it looks cool on TV.”
Cost-Benefit Analysis of Imperial Madness
Let’s do the math the Pentagon hopes nobody does: millions spent on missiles to destroy thousands of dollars worth of cocaine that represents less than 0.1% of regional traffic. Even if every strike “succeeded,” the strategic impact approaches zero while the fiscal and human costs mount exponentially. This isn’t inefficiency – it’s calculated waste dressed up as policy.
The same resources could fund treatment centers, border security technology, international cooperation agreements, and economic development programs that actually reduce trafficking. But those approaches don’t involve explosions, don’t generate defense contracts, and don’t provide presidents with tough-on-crime photo ops. So we get trillion-dollar militarism that fails by design while succeeding at what it actually wants: transferring public wealth to private contractors while terrorizing brown and black people in the Global South.
“The war on drugs is the longest running show in American history,” comedian Jim Gaffigan said during his tour, “and we’re still in season one because nobody wants to cancel it. Too many people making too much money. The drugs keep flowing, the prisons keep filling, and the missiles keep launching. It’s not a failure – it’s a business model. And business is good.”
Trump’s Doctrine: Violence as Virtue
These strikes aren’t aberrations of Trump policy – they’re expressions of it. Trump’s entire political brand rests on performative cruelty: family separation at borders, Muslim bans, attacking protesters, threatening political opponents, and now launching missiles at suspected drug smugglers in international waters. Violence isn’t a tool of last resort in Trump’s worldview – it’s the first response, the preferred response, the only response that matters.
By classifying traffickers as terrorists and applying war powers to law enforcement, Trump erases the boundary between policing and warfare. This allows using military force domestically and internationally without judicial oversight, congressional authorization, or public accountability. It’s authoritarianism with constitutional window dressing – fascism that files paperwork.
“Trump sees the world in two categories,” comedian Wanda Sykes said during her recent HBO special. “People who praise him and people who deserve missiles. And since drug smugglers definitely aren’t praising him – boom. Due process? That’s for losers. Evidence? That’s for prosecutors. Trump’s got missiles and immunity and a Supreme Court that told him he can do whatever the fuck he wants. So he’s doing whatever the fuck he wants.”
The Normalization of Extrajudicial Killing
The most dangerous aspect isn’t the strikes themselves – it’s how quickly they become normalized. We’ve accepted drone warfare, accepted targeted killings, accepted Guantanamo, accepted torture, accepted mass surveillance. Now we’re accepting that the U.S. military can launch strikes on suspected criminals in international waters based on classified intelligence with no judicial process and call it lawful.
Each precedent expands executive power. Each strike lowers the threshold for violence. Each operation creates legal frameworks that future administrations will exploit and expand. Today it’s drug smugglers. Tomorrow it’s environmental activists branded eco-terrorists. Next year it’s protesters classified as domestic extremists. The machinery of extrajudicial killing, once normalized, finds infinite applications.
“We’re watching the government kill people without trial and the response is basically ‘neat,'” comedian Ali Wong said on her podcast. “No riots. No protests. Just lawmakers saying ‘that’s troubling’ and moving on to the next news cycle. Meanwhile, people are being hunted from the sky like this is a video game. Except video games let you respawn. These people don’t get that option.”
The Working Class Pays – In Blood and Money
The men killed weren’t cartel bosses. They weren’t kingpins or distributors or anyone with real power in the drug trade. They were workers – the expendable labor at the bottom of trafficking hierarchies who transport product for wages because they lack better options. Killing them doesn’t disrupt supply chains. It just creates job openings that desperate people will fill because economic desperation doesn’t end when missiles launch.
Meanwhile, American taxpayers fund the missiles, the operations, the ships, the aircraft, the intelligence, and the vast bureaucracy that coordinates strikes. We pay billions for a program that kills poor people, enriches defense contractors, and changes nothing about drug availability in U.S. cities. That’s not security – that’s a wealth transfer scheme with body counts.
“They’re killing poor people to stop drugs from reaching poor people who buy drugs to escape being poor,” comedian Tom Segura said during his special. “It’s the circle of life, except instead of lions and gazelles, it’s missiles and fishing boats. And Elton John isn’t singing about this one because even he’s like ‘that’s too fucked up, I’m out.'”
Who Profits From This Violence?
Follow the money: defense contractors profit from missile sales. Private prison corporations profit from drug war arrests. Police departments profit from civil asset forfeiture. Politicians profit from tough-on-crime branding. The only people who don’t profit are the ones getting killed and the taxpayers funding the killing.
This isn’t policy failure – it’s policy success measured by different metrics. If the goal were reducing drug traffic, these strikes would be discontinued as ineffective. But that’s not the goal. The goal is maintaining perpetual low-intensity conflict that justifies military budgets, expands executive power, and generates profits for the industries that fund political campaigns. In that context, the strikes are working perfectly.
“The war on drugs is working exactly as designed,” comedian Bert Kreischer said on his show, “it’s just not designed to stop drugs. It’s designed to make money, fill prisons, and give the government an excuse to do whatever it wants. Measured by those standards? Huge success. We’ve got more drugs than ever, more people in prison than ever, and a government that shoots first and asks questions never. Mission accomplished, America.”
What This Means for the Future
If these strikes proceed without significant legal or political consequences, they establish precedent that will haunt us for generations. Future administrations will cite Operation Southern Spear as justification for expanded use of military force in contexts far beyond drug interdiction. The legal reasoning – that suspected criminals can be classified as unlawful combatants and killed without trial – creates frameworks applicable to any group the government wishes to target.
We’re watching the architecture of authoritarianism being constructed in real-time. Each strike, each classified briefing, each congressional investigation that goes nowhere adds another brick. Eventually, we’ll wake up in a society where extrajudicial killing is routine, accepted, and invisible – another normal function of government that nobody questions because questioning itself has become dangerous.
“You think this stops at drug smugglers?” comedian Nate Bargatze said during his recent set. “This is how it starts. First they shoot people you don’t care about. Then they shoot people you kinda care about. Then they shoot someone you know. And by the time they get to you, there’s nobody left to give a shit. That’s not paranoia – that’s history. Every dictatorship starts by killing the people nobody will defend.”
Demanding Accountability – While We Still Can
Congress must release the video evidence publicly. We need full accounting of costs, casualty numbers, targeting criteria, and post-strike assessments. Independent international investigators should examine whether these strikes violated humanitarian law. And ultimately, we need a national conversation about whether treating alleged criminals as military targets represents the kind of country we want to be.
This requires more than outrage. It demands sustained political pressure, legal challenges, media scrutiny, and public mobilization. It means demanding that lawmakers who watched that footage and called it “troubling” actually do something beyond expressing concern. Because concern without action is complicity with better optics.
“They’re counting on you not caring,” comedian Tiffany Haddish said on her podcast. “They’re counting on you being too tired, too distracted, too overwhelmed to fight back. They’re counting on you thinking ‘well, they were criminals, so whatever.’ And the second you think that – the second you decide some people deserve missiles – you’ve already lost. Because soon enough, they’ll decide you deserve missiles too. And there won’t be anyone left who gives a fuck.”
The Question Nobody Wants to Answer
Here’s what keeps me up at night: if these strikes happened under a Democratic administration, Republicans would be screaming about executive overreach, unconstitutional warfare, and Obama-style drone strikes. If they happened under a Democrat, Fox News would run 24-hour coverage about lawless liberals murdering without trial. But because Trump did it, suddenly it’s patriotic, necessary, and anyone questioning it gets accused of supporting drug traffickers.
The hypocrisy is bipartisan. Democrats condemned Bush’s torture program and Obama’s drone strikes, then stayed silent when Biden continued similar policies, and now express concern about Trump’s Caribbean operations while doing nothing substantive to stop them. Both parties love executive power when they hold it and hate it when opponents do. Neither will meaningfully constrain it because both want the option of unchecked violence when their turn comes.
“You want to know the truth?” comedian Louis C.K. said during his recent comeback tour. “Both parties want the power to kill people without consequences. They just argue about who gets killed. Republicans want to shoot immigrants and drug dealers. Democrats want to shoot terrorists and climate deniers. Nobody wants to give up the missiles – they just want the missiles pointed at different people. That’s not democracy. That’s a murder auction where the highest bidder picks the targets.”
The Moral Bankruptcy of Both Parties
Until we have political leadership willing to dismantle the machinery of extrajudicial killing – not redirect it, not reform it, but eliminate it – these strikes will continue and expand. Trump won’t be the last president to launch missiles at suspected criminals. He’s just the one doing it now. The next administration will inherit these precedents and either continue them or expand them because restraining executive power requires courage neither party possesses.
Real accountability means prosecuting officials who authorized illegal strikes. It means releasing classified footage regardless of political embarrassment. It means admitting that the war on drugs has always been a war on the poor and ending it entirely. It means choosing justice over missiles, rehabilitation over revenge, humanity over imperialism. And until we demand that – loudly, persistently, without compromise – the killing continues.
“This isn’t about Trump,” comedian Jo Koy said during his Netflix special. “Trump’s just the loudest, dumbest, most obvious version of something both parties do. They all love power. They all love violence. They all love spending your money to kill poor people. The only difference is Democrats apologize after and Republicans don’t. But dead is dead, whether you get an apology or not. And these people are really, really dead.”
Conclusion: The Cost of Silence
Thirteen men are dead because the Trump administration decided missiles are an appropriate response to suspected drug smuggling. Two of those men were killed while clinging to wreckage, shipwrecked and defenseless, executed because the Pentagon theorized they might pose future threats. The strikes cost more than the drugs allegedly destroyed. The strategic impact approaches zero. The legal justification is dubious at best, criminal at worst. And Congress watched video footage, called it troubling, and did nothing.
This is America in 2025: a country that spends millions to kill poor people in the name of fighting drugs while drugs remain readily available, affordable, and omnipresent in every city. We’ve militarized law enforcement, criminalized poverty, normalized extrajudicial killing, and called it security. We’ve let defense contractors profit from perpetual warfare while working-class communities pay in blood and taxes. We’ve accepted that some lives matter less than missiles cost.
And the worst part? We’re barely talking about it. Thirteen people killed by U.S. military strikes in international waters should be national scandal. It should be congressional investigations, prime-time coverage, protests in the streets. Instead, it’s a classified briefing, a few concerned statements, and on to the next news cycle. That silence is complicity. That acceptance is consent. That normalization is how democracies die – not with explosions, but with shrugs.
“You know how you know you’re living in a fascist country?” comedian Ron White said during his tour. “When the government can shoot people on camera, show the video to lawmakers, have them say ‘that’s fucked up,’ and nothing happens. No consequences. No accountability. Just missiles, corpses, and another appropriations bill to buy more missiles. That’s not democracy – that’s a protection racket with a flag. And we’re all paying for it.”
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
