President Donald Trump said the United States would be “starting” land strikes on drug operations in Latin America, though he again declined to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign would begin, or whether countries could still take steps to avert the threatened action.
“We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, and now we’re starting by land. And by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” Trump told reporters on Friday in the Oval Office.
The US president has for days been pledging to broaden the effort, which follows a series of Pentagon attacks on what it has described as drug-smuggling boats operating in international waters off the coast of South America.
While Trump’s posturing has largely been viewed as a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he insisted on Friday that land targeting may not be limited to Venezuela.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Venezuela,” Trump said, adding that “people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.”
Trump has justified the actions by framing the fight against drug smuggling as akin to combat operations. He told reporters that if overdose deaths were counted like combat casualties, it would be “like a war that would be unparalleled.”
Striking targets on land would represent a major escalation. Earlier this week, Maduro warned that if his country were to come under foreign attack, the working class should mount a “general insurrectionary strike” and push for “an even more radical revolution.”(Bloomberg.com)
