TRANSCRIPT Cultural Baggage 092826

Woody Guthrie: (00:00)
For the very boy, we'll show these fascists what a couple of hillbillies can do.

Host Dean Becker: (00:04)
Hello, my friends. Thank you for being with us on this edition of Cultural Baggage. I am Dean Becker, the Reverend Mosai. We have two great guests with us today. First off, I want to introduce, uh, a reporter with Reason Magazine, Mr. Jacob Solem. How are you doing, Jacob? 

Jacob Sullum: (00:22)
I'm doing all right. How are you? I, I'm well, thank 

Host Dean Becker: (00:23)
You, sir. And we also have with us, uh, the director for decades, the, uh, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, Mr. Ethan Nadelman. Hello, Ethan. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (00:34)
Hello, Dean. Just made clear, f- founder and former executive director. 

Host Dean Becker: (00:39)
Well, fair enough, fair enough. What brings us together here today is a report that just, just hit me, uh, upside the head. It was, uh, written by Mr. uh, Solem. It was titled up How Murdering Suspected Drug Smugglers Became the New Normal. It has a subheading, a year after launching his explosive anti-drug campaign, President Donald Trump routinely reigns death on alleged cocaine couriers. 

Jacob Sullum: (01:08)
Well, when, uh, Trump announced this new strategy, you know, over a year ago at this point, it was pretty startling. Uh, the usual approach to drug interdiction, which still happens, you know, the Coast Guard still does this, um, is to stop boats that you think might be carrying drugs, search them, and then if you find the drugs, you seize the drugs, you arrest the people on board, um, and they may or may not end up being prosecuted, which we could get into later. Uh, very often the Justice Department decides not to prosecute them because they think these cases aren't really worth their resources. Uh, but instead of doing that, Trump said, "We're just gonna blow up the boats and kill everybody on board." Uh, so that's a pretty dramatic shift in US drug policy. And initially, I thought, you know, this can't pass muster, right, under, under the law of the Constitution. 

Jacob Sullum: (02:06)
Um, and, you know, there's gonna be a sufficient blow back that it will deter him, but that is not what has happened. And over a year later, uh, this is still happening. Uh, the latest, uh, tally is 70 strikes and 234 people killed. And that's without any, any semblance of due process, uh, without any way to even verify the allegation that each of these boats is carrying drugs, let alone that every person on board is participating in that. Um, there have been credible reports that, uh, some of these people at least were, were not, did not belong to a drug trafficking organization, were perhaps, uh, unlawful immigrants who were being smuggled, for example. Um, and we don't, don't really know because the government has not identified, uh, for the most part who these people are. And in fact, does not even know, uh, in many cases who these people are, right? 

Jacob Sullum: (03:07)
So you may, may ask, how can they possibly verify that all, all the people they're killing are narco terrorists, as the president calls them? And the answer is you can't. Can't verify that even if it were true that, uh, the people, all the people on these boats were part of drug trafficking organizations, you can't just kill them under, under US law or under international law. Um, that is similar to, you know, a police officer, uh, who decides instead of taking a suspected drug dealer into custody is just gonna shoot him dead on the spot, right? That would be, I think, uh, instantly recognized as murder. Um, the same thing goes here, uh, although Trump has tried to justify, uh, the strategy with a couple of arguments, uh, uh, a sort of moral argument, and then also an argument under inter- international law. And I think neither of them holds water when you, when you think about it. 

Jacob Sullum: (04:03)
Uh, the international law justification relies on the premise that we're engaged in an armed conflict with, uh, non-state actors who are engaged in an attack on the United States. Uh, so it's a non-inter - international armed conflict according to Trump. Uh, but these attacks plainly do not meet the criteria for such a conflict. Um, and even if that conflict existed, uh, it would not be justified to kill everyone on board, including, you know, second strikes that, that kill people who survive the initial strike. Um, that's clearly contrary to the law of war. Uh, and then the moral argument is, uh, that, you know, people die after using illegal drugs. So anybody who is engaged in, in supplying those drugs is a, a morally justified target. It's okay to kill them. This is an act of self-defense. This is an act of, uh, righteous retribution. Um, and by the same logic, uh, the government could be killing anyone who supplies alcohol, which is implicated in many, you know, deaths every year in the United States. 

Jacob Sullum: (05:12)
Um, that's the s - the moral logic of it, right? I don't think anybody is prepared to defend that proposition, but, but logically, it's the same claim. Uh, so it doesn't hold up as a, as a moral matter, as a legal matter under US law, or as, uh, a justified act of self-defense, uh, under international law. 

Host Dean Becker: (05:33)
Thank you. Uh, that was Jacob Solomon. Now, I, I wanna turn to Ethan Nadelman for a second here. Ethan, we've had here in the United States, some say over 50 million arrests, uh, over the lifetime of this drug war. Uh, we hit a peak of, I think, 1.68 million back around the year 2000, uh, number of arrests. But of those arrests, uh, none were, I don't know, taken out on the city streets. Uh, maybe o- on occasion somebody objects or some cop, uh, gets scared and, and has killed somebody, but it has not been the, uh, modus operandi of, of law enforcement in these United States, uh, up till this point, right? 

Ethan Nadelmann: (06:14)
Uh, I mean, I think that's right. Uh, you know, it, it's true. Uh, I mean, look, first of all, I, I should say, Dean, I mean, I, I, I agree with everything that Jacob just said in terms of his analysis and his perspective on this. And I think when you ask, have we done things like this before, I mean, there are obviously cases where US intelligence agencies or law enforcement agencies have been involved in one way or another in going after some of the major kingpins and assisting Mexican or Colombian forces or it's happened to other parts of the world in, in sometimes a deadly operation and maybe even a targeting of a, of a, of a senior, really senior person. This notion, however, of going after the, um, you know, the little guys who are involved, we think, but not always, uh, in f - in fact, in some case, maybe innocent, um, that really is, um, it does seem fairly unprecedented. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (07:10)
I mean, there have been rules of engagement on this stuff going back forever. And I think if you go back to when the Pentagon and Coast Guard really started getting involved in this 30, 40 years ago, I mean, there were rules about this, about boarding ships and chasing them down, and the notion of just blowing boats out of the water, water, um, just seems absolutely, you know, kind of preposterous. And I think, you know, if you ask why is Trump doing this, I mean, there's nothing honorable about the potential answers, right? One is that he wants to appeal to a kind of know-nothing base who loves the idea of killing people, um, you know, who wishes a lot more people were being executed, whether people who have been convicted of, you know, first degree murder or other offenses, or just, you know, just this aggressive take. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (07:58)
The second thing I think is, is a notion that this will somehow reduce the flow of drugs into this country. Um, but we have basically, I think, no evidence of that. Um, we, we know that, you know, drug traffickers always respond by looking at other ways to get this stuff in and shifting their routes. Thirdly, you know, Trump's claim that this is dealing, you know, a way of responding to the overdose, um, fatality situation in the US. In fact, you know, virtually all of the opioids and fentanyl is coming from Mexico, uh, co - the coast of Columbia, Mex - uh, Venezuela have remarkably little to do with this. It's primarily cocaine, um, that would be on those boats, and that's, you know, has only relatively little involvement in, in the overdose fatalities that we've, you know, have tragically hit the US over the, over the last decade. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (08:43)
So I really, I really think it really much more fits with Trump's notion that he can get away with anything, that he can do anything. Uh, you know, his famous line, "I could walk down the middle of, was it 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I could get away with it." It is a way of saying the law does not apply to me. I can go out and kill. I can go out and appeal to the basist instincts of people in the American public. And I think now that the Supreme Court has ruled that essentially presidents cannot be held accountable for criminal actions engaged in while they were in the White House, it gives them that extra measure of protection so far as I can see. I am curious about whether Congress, if the Democrats managed to take back one or both houses, you know, about six weeks from now, I'll be curious whether this becomes part of what they focus on. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (09:31)
Um, I haven't looked at where American public opinion is on this issue, um, but I definitely hope that the Democrats, you know, if they're in a position to do so, um, will really, um, focus in on this thing and, uh, you know, look for some kind of severance of these operations at the very least, and maybe some forms of accountability as well. 

Host Dean Becker: (09:52)
Uh, I'm gonna read a bit from, uh, Jacob's piece there in reason. "A year after Trump launched his bloodthirsty anti-drug campaign, the summary execution of alleged drug smugglers has become the new normal. "He goes on to say on one of these, uh, boats that all 11 men had been, quote," positively identified as members of the Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua. "And I, I wanted to go on to say further that the Trump administration cannot give the names of these people who were killed. They don't know who they were, they were killing. It's just a, a blanket statement that they were positively identified without actually knowing who these people are. Uh, responses from either of you? 

Jacob Sullum: (10:36)
Yeah, I mean, I, I think, uh, this claim, you know, there's the first problem we ju - you just identified is we don't actually know who these people are. So we don't know what the evidence is to suggest that they're members of these organizations. But also, even if they are members of, of so-called foreign terrorist organizations, that designation is entirely up to the executive branch, and it is not a license to kill, at will, any member of a listed group. What it means legally is that the Treasury Department can block financing of these groups, uh, and the Justice Department can prosecute people for providing material support to those groups. It doesn't mean that you can kill at will anybody who, who you say belongs to one of these groups. So legally, that is not a justification. Um, and, and I also wanna reinforce a couple of points that Ethan made. 

Jacob Sullum: (11:34)
Trump is obviously confused about the drugs carried by these boats. He has repeatedly referred to it as fentanyl. It's not fentanyl. It's cocaine primarily. That's the drug that's being carried, um, on the routes that he's targeting. Um, and he has asserted that every time he blows up one of these boats, he's saving 25,000 American lives, right? Um, which is, you know, obviously impossible because at this point, it would be close to two million lives supposedly saved, which is many times the number of drug-related deaths, uh, that are recorded in the United States each year. Um, so that's obviously impossible, and it, it, it rests in part on this assumption that this is fentanyl as opposed to cocaine. But even if this were all fentanyl, there's no way it could possibly be true, you know, uh, he's assuming, first of all, that all this cocaine is deaths into the United States, which is not true. 

Jacob Sullum: (12:29)
A lot of it is going to Europe. He's assuming that any given quantity, uh, that you, uh, destroy is thereby reduces the total supply of all Americans. That's obviously not true, uh, because traffickers compensate for intercepted shipments by sending more. It's always been true. Um, and Trump himself has implicitly, implicitly acknowledged that point by saying that the old method of interdiction where you seize the drugs, destroy them later as opposed to blowing them up on the spot has no impact on the drug supply. Um, he said that himself. So if it doesn't, uh, if destroying it later doesn't, you know, have a significant impact on, on the drug supply, how can destroying it on the spot do that? Um, and he's assuming that any given amount, uh, of drugs will be divided evenly a- among, uh, in- into fatal doses that will be consumed by different people, you know, in one sitting. 

Jacob Sullum: (13:26)
You know, it's a standard sort of assumption the government makes when it, when it, when it, uh, tries to defend, um, uh, the war on drugs, uh, you know, on that basis. Uh, so it's totally absurd, that claim, and yet he, he and also the people who work for him have repeatedly alleged that. So that's part of an attempt to justify this in moral terms, if not in legal terms. And the one other thing, uh, that Ethan mentioned and struck me is that, you know, Trump for, uh, you know, official decisions basically has immunity under, under the Supreme Court's ruling. Beyond that, he can pardon anyone involved in these operations. So it means there's no accountability, right? If he decides even on his last day in office, "I'm gonna give a blanket pardon to every, you know, the members of the military, the people at the Pentagon who are involved in these operations, and so they can never be prosecuted for murder or conspiracy to commit murder," uh, then they can't, uh, under federal law. 

Jacob Sullum: (14:24)
Uh, so, so there is a complete lack of accountability. Um, uh, Congress has given this some attention, but, uh, the critics, uh, you know, uh, among the Dec - Democrats, for the most part, are trying to draw distinctions that are really not essential. They're trying to say, "Were these people really drug traffickers, for example?" Um, and a few members of Congress like, uh, Rand Paul and Thomas Massey have said, "It doesn't matter whether..." First of all, we don't know because they never, were never, you know, the government never had to offer any proof, but even if they were, you can't just kill these people without any kind of due process. You know, that's the essence of the problem. It's not, um, you know, are they rightly identifying drug traffickers, is that there is no death penalty authorized by US law, uh, for these crimes, even if you did arrest them and prosecute them successfully. 

Jacob Sullum: (15:21)
Um, so, uh, a- and I think I mentioned, um, around the same time the, the, during the first few months of these strikes when they're killing all of these people, the Coast Guard simultaneously is intercepting boats, as they always have done, and arresting people on board. And typically, what happens in those cases is those people are sent back to their home countries because the Justice Department decides that their crimes are so minor that it's not even worth pursuing. So these, but the people who are guilty of the same conduct, allegedly, right, somehow are worthy of death. It makes no sense. 

Host Dean Becker: (15:55)
Thank you. Uh, that was Jacob Solem. I'm reading again from your report here. "The boat strikes do not qualify as, quote, hostilities. The Justice Department's, uh, Office of Legal Counsel told Congress last fall, because US forces do not face a plausible threat of casualties. "I say, end quote there. And I wanna say this, there has never been one instance of any of these people on these small boats firing at US forces of, of, uh, engaging quote, wartime activities. It's, it's a one-sided deal, is it not? 

Jacob Sullum: (16:28)
Yeah, I mean, the, the point is that they're killing these people from afar with missiles, uh, without any sort of violent threat against them or against anyone else. They're not trying to defend themselves or defend anyone else. Um, and the fact that. The reason that Trump is saying, uh, there are no hostilities, by the way, is to avoid, uh, the requirements of the War Powers Resolution, which apply in, in, in cases where there either are hostilities or hostilities are, are likely to be imminent. And he's saying, "We're fine. We have no, you know, there's no danger to US forces, therefore it's not hostilities." But the idea that you could have a non-international armed conflict without hostilities is a contradiction in terms. So his attempt to escape the requirements of the War Powers Resolution totally undermines his argument on inter- international law, uh, because he's saying that there is a war, and a war has to involve, you know, uh, hostilities of some sort. 

Host Dean Becker: (17:28)
Uh, you mentioned that, uh, Trump could, on his last day, pardon all of these people involved in these killings, but I don't think he can negate the potential of these being called, uh, war crimes and prosecuted by the United Nations or, you know, something like The Hague, uh, i- in the future. I don't think he can 

Jacob Sullum: (17:49)
Prevent that, right? Yeah, but the US does not recognize the authority of that court. Um, it's not a party to that arrangement, so that's, that's quite unlikely. I mean, this is the, you know, they could theoretically, uh, indict people for war crimes, but in what context would they be arrested or extradited and, and subject to the court's authority? 

Ethan Nadelmann: (18:12)
You know, Dean, if I could jump in. Sure. Um, you know, I mean, just I think also putting this into a kind of broader political context, um, as well as looking at other areas in which the US uses force, I mean, like, one could look at, for example, the US use of drones to target terrorists around the world, and that's something that's been a bipartisan thing. Obama did it, you know, it was a seen, seen as a way of attacking, um, terrorists, you know, with ver - but with very close oversight and controls and calculations about co- collateral stra - you know, collateral, uh, losses and things like that. So there is some little element of doing this sort of thing, but in a, in a state where you have recognized terrorist groups that are active, whether it's in the Gulf or in Africa or whatever it might be, I think the other context to look at this in is in terms of US policy in Latin America and Trump administration policy, you know, there's an element of this which kind of ren - you know, kind of reckons back to, um, the days of gunboat diplomacy, going back to 19th century, which was the idea of using US mil- military naval forces to intimidate foreign governments. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (19:18)
Now, even in those days, I don't think it necessarily meant opening fire on, on smuggling vessels. Um, you know, it didn't go that far. But there is this, you know, notion of Latin America being the US backyard. I think if you look at the other things that happened here, when you look at what the US did in Venezuela in, uh, was it the past year or so in taking out Maduro, capturing him, bringing him to a US court, installing somebody, um, his vice president who's much more malleable, I mean, I think many people would look at that as being, you know, inappropriate and a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and other serious matters, but also having been in many respects successful in that it took out a guy who was obviously implicated in all sorts of criminal activity in addition to being a very problematic dictator in Venezuela. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (20:08)
And, and it was to some extent, I think, something that many governments in Latin America may be privately approved of while worrying about the broader implications. Now, you also have Trump's saber outling vis-a-vis Cuba and the threats of some sort of invasion of targeting of the Cuban leadership. And that's kind of taking the Venezuela scenario to the whole next level. Now, I think you can look at what they did with these, um, killings on the suspected drug smelling boats sort of in that context about the US using, you know, military violence to accomplish its objectives and being increasingly comfortable with doing that. I think obviously what's happened in Iran, where that initial attack in Iran, following up with the Israelis, you know, there was that week of optimism that it would lead to a kind of Venezuela-like result, where once again, people might have applauded the outcome even though they were worried about the broader implications. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (21:04)
But now that Trump's, you know, attack on Iran has turned out to be an utter disaster from both a broader strategic perspective, political perspective, and even economic perspective, I think it's probably giving him some pause in that area. So I would tend to look at these attacks on, on the suspected drug smelling things, not only in the context of Trump wanting to sound tough on drugs, not only in the notion of Trump wanting to sound tough on cracking down on invasions of our border, um, but also in terms of a real inclination to, you know, come back to the ideas that we are gonna use our military advantage vis-a-vis the rest of the world and certainly Latin America and the Caribbean in aggressive ways. Um, Congress has already indicated on the Republican leadership that they are not gonna hold the president account if that they, if he is engaging in things that would traditionally be regarded as acts of war, that, you know, they'll just accept his say so that it's not a war if he says it's not a war, and even if he actually does, does say it's a war, they're still gonna stand down and not, not call him, not, you know, not assert Congress's constitutional power, um, over the right to declare war. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (22:13)
So when you have this kind of lame rubber stamp Congress right now, unwilling to, you know, call in Trump or hold him accountable, I think we just have to see where he's next gonna exert this sort of, um, coercion and this killing of people who are suspected criminals, undeserving of what they were, got in those attacks, um, or even of innocence in order to accomplish what he sees as the Trump foreign policy's, uh, goals. 

Jacob Sullum: (22:42)
Um, I, I think the, uh, you know, Obama precedent is interesting. A, a bunch of Republicans were, uh, very critical of that, uh, policy, but at least in that situation, the government is ostensibly targeting actual terrorists, right? Right, right. People who pose a violent threat to US targets, that's the whole premise of it. But in this case, we're talking about so-called terrorists who are not engaged in, in violence against the United States and who don't, don't even fit the conventional definition of terrorist, which, you know, the standard definition is that you're using violence to, uh, based on either a political or religious ideology to try to achieve, you're trying to intimidate government or intimidate a populist to try to achieve political goals. That's not what drug trafficking organizations are doing. They're supplying products that Americans want and profiting from it, profiting from it a lot because of drug prohibition, right? 

Jacob Sullum: (23:48)
Mm-hmm. And so it's completely, uh, it's not a - not analogous at all, uh, in, in that sense. Um, a- a- and I think, so I think even people who though what Obama did was okay should have a problem with this because it's not even ostensibly, you know, if you look at what's happening, uh, you know, you mentioned violence is extremely one-sided. It's not about responding to a, a threat of violence, let alone one that really qualifies as terrorism under conventional definitions. Um - When 

Ethan Nadelmann: (24:18)
You think about it, Jacob, you know, there's even the sense that there is some not insignificant minority of Americans, the kind of Trumpian base and maybe a few others, who would say, "Hey, anybody crossing the US border illegally, shoot 'em. Mull 'em down." Right? I mean, I, what, if, if you ask, "Should anybody crossing the US border be shot, you know, on site," you know? Um, you know, I think you could probably get 20 f - 20, 25% of Americans to say yes, you know, effectively meaning that millions of people crossing this country as, as undocumented migrants would be up to being shot, as well as the handful of smugglers in between them. And I think part of this is, once again, the play, Trump's play to the base, which, um, and quite frankly, I don't know, as we look at all the loss of sup - you know, Trump's numbers, popularity going down and down these days, and even Republican candidates increasingly separating themselves from him, you know, his, his attacks, his authorized attacks on these suspected drug smelling boats, I don't know that, that, that filter, factors at all in the American consciousness, right? 

Ethan Nadelmann: (25:25)
It's much more about the economy. It's about inflation. It's those sorts of things, you know, where we continue to be reminded in a very sobering way that for most Americans, um, you know, ultimately violations of the constitution, abuses of executive power, um, degradations of democracy, you know, I mean, that all of these things don't loom very large. 

Jacob Sullum: (25:51)
Yeah. I, I, I think that's probably right. Um, and when you ask, as I asked you when I was writing this story, is this gonna, are they gonna keep doing this? Is this now the new normal for future presidents? Um, and, you know, part of that depends on whether voters actually care one way or another. Maybe they care in the sense that they like it and they want it to continue. And that, that is certainly true of a lot of Trump supporters, I think. Um, and, you know, this is consistent with what Trump has said repeatedly over the years, which is we need to be executing more drug offenders, right? We need to - I, I - We need, we, we need to do that under the law, but I don't think that's a, you know, a justified policy, but it's not the policy, right? That's not what the law says. 

Jacob Sullum: (26:33)
The law does not authorize the death penalty, even if you arrest and try and convict somebody, uh, of, uh, uh, you know, b- be- being a crew member of one of these, uh, drug boats. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's not authorized by law. Um, it's part of this sort of extra legal fantasy that he's actually made reality. 

Host Dean Becker: (26:51)
Gentlemen, we're about to end our time here together. I, I wanna say this, that we hear stories of the CIA being involved in drug raids in Mexico. We hear stories of, uh, the US involvement in this drug war around the world. Uh, this is a report from the Wall Street Journal that US troops are now fighting the drug war on the ground in Ecuador. Dozens of American military personnel joined Ecuadorian police in raids marking a new level of direct US involvement. I, we know, the- these three people here know more than anybody that Drug War is a miserable failure with no chance of ever succeeding, and yet these efforts continue, uh, into infinity. Um, we gotta wrap it up. Your closing thoughts, please. 

Ethan Nadelmann: (27:39)
Well, I mean, Dean, I'll just say, yes, there's a long history of, uh, CIA, sometimes DEA, law enforcement, collaborating, cooperating, um, providing intelligence, but also all sorts of rules regulating at least the role of law enforcement. Having the military engaged at this level now may in fact be taking it to a new level, as they're doing, for example, in Ecuador. Um, but once again, we're living under administration that really doesn't, is always pushing the boundaries, pushing, you know, as far as they can to see what they can get away with, and that's what they're doing here. 

Host Dean Becker: (28:08)
That was Ethan Nadelman, uh, former director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Uh, closing thoughts there, um, Mr. Jacobsola? 

Jacob Sullum: (28:15)
Yeah, I mean, the, in addition to the, the whole problem w- with the rule of law, which Trump is obviously violating, he is perverting the mission of the military because he's obliterating the distinction between, uh, civilians and combatants. He's saying anybody who's involved in the illegal drug trade is a combatant, which is not true anymore. And, and he's using that to justify what is plainly murder under US law. 

Host Dean Becker: (28:41)
Gentlemen, thank you so much. Uh, once again, I remind you, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag. I urge you to please be careful and always remember that euphoria is a blessing, not a crime.