I Love Drug Traffickers

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, December 03, 2025

 

Were you aware that I love foreign drug traffickers? Love ’em. Yes, sir. Every morning, I wake up, prayerfully close my eyes, and hope, as devoutly as I’ve ever hoped for anything, that somewhere in the Caribbean there is a foreign drug trafficker heading toward the United States.

 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asked why, despite being a vocally patriotic sort, I have held steadfastly to the conviction that the federal government possesses no freestanding authority to launch rockets at vessels that it suspects might be engaged in the movement of narcotics. In response, I have had to repeatedly explain that, quite obviously, it is because I’m an unreconstructed enthusiast for the global cocaine trade.

 

Why else, after all, would I hold such a prudish opinion? Sure, there are obvious constitutional problems with the practice — problems such as that the executive branch has not secured a declaration of war, or an authorization of military force, or any other statutory permission to attack non-combatant shipping on the open seas. And, yes, there are practical issues — such as that, in every documented case, it would have been possible for the U.S. military to stop, board, and search the boats that it suspected were being used to traffic illicit substances, rather than to blow them up without investigation. But fixating on objections such as those is for wusses and pansies. Real men just come out and say it: I want Pedro and Javier to succeed in their dastardly aims.

 

My colleague Andy McCarthy suggested recently in these pages that the Trump administration is dealing here “with an activity — cocaine trafficking — that is not an act of war, is not terrorism, is not killing thousands of Americans (that’s fentanyl), and is traditionally handled in the United States by criminal prosecution under an extensive, decades-old set of laws.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I hope Andy won’t mind me relating that, while he says things like this publicly, it’s all a cover for his real agenda, which is to make the world safe for international criminals. Like me, Andy adores international criminals. If, this year, I were to get Andy a Christmas gift, it would be a drug dealer — preferably with his own Narco-Submarine.

 

Go back in time and look at any objection that I have ever hurled at the federal government, and you will find that it is easily explained by my preference for outlaws. In 2013, I argued that the Obama administration did not have the authority to take military action in Syria. This was because I was infatuated with Bashar al-Assad. Earlier this year, I contended that the Trump administration needed congressional authorization before striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. That was because I was desperate for the mullahs to develop a nuclear weapon, which I hoped would be used against Israel. A few of the people who nominally agreed with me in these cases made performative references to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, or to the Federalist Papers, but this was just a rhetorical feint. The success of our favorite dictators and theocracies was at stake, and we were not going to fumble that ball.

 

This rule does not solely apply to matters of war and peace. All of my proceduralism is advanced with a similar goal in mind. I favor jury trials, mens rea prerequisites, and the presumption of innocence because I want the guilty to walk free. I advocate separation of powers because I have a deep-seated hatred for the poor. I defend federalism to ensure that there remain as many pockets of bigotry as is geographically possible. Heck, my reflexive inclination toward the very concept of written law — which, naturally, I couple with an originalist bent — is a mere smokescreen for my misanthropy. I say that it’s about stability and good governance, but it’s not really. I just hate the self-evidently virtuous schemes that would automatically improve everyone’s lives.

 

So it is on the oceans. As far as I’m concerned, there are just two sorts of people in this equation: the honorable drug-peddlers who are filling our country with white gold, and the sinful American military officials who are trying to stop them. By litigating meaningless, lily-livered, near-traitorous questions, such as, “What war, exactly?” and “What makes a cocaine-trader a ‘terrorist’?” and “How do we know they were guilty if we exploded them from a distance?” I am doing my part to help. I love those guys. There can be no other cause of my discomfort.