Okay let me get this straight. The US military blows up three narco speedboats in the Eastern Pacific, takes out eight dudes literally caught red handed with enough fentanyl to kill a mid sized city, and the DC chatterboxes are clutching their pearls over, quote, proper legal authority. Seriously? Since when did combating actual terrorism require a permission slip from the same people who couldn't find their own subpoenas without a map?

I grew up in Boston during the early 2000s opioid crisis. You know what we called the guys pushing this poison? Criminals. Not non international armed combatants. Not undocumented pharmaceutical entrepreneurs. Criminals. So imagine my shock when Trump finally treats them like the terrorists they are and suddenly Senator So and So needs a three act play explaining why vaporizing drug runners protects Americans. Spoiler alert, it does. Pass the popcorn.

The Southern Command dropped footage this week showing what happens when you mess with American resolve. Three boats. Three strikes. Eight fewer narco terrorists. Call me old fashioned, but watching cartel speedboats turn into fireworks displays feels more satisfying than anything on Netflix this month. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't waffle. Didn't convene a focus group. Just followed the intel and pulled the trigger. Literally.

Meanwhile, career bureaucrats are hyperventilating about, wait for it, whether survivors of the initial September strike constituted war crime victims. Let that sink in. The same people who look the other way when fentanyl overdoses destroy families from Ohio to Oregon suddenly develop acute humanitarian sensitivity when we smoke dealers literally caught trying to dump chemical weapons on our streets. The cognitive dissonance could power Vegas for a decade.

I remember 2016 vividly. Back when the previous administration treated the cartels like misunderstood small businesses. Oh, sure, they killed 100,000 Americans with fentanyl last year alone. But let's send them economic development grants! Maybe some sensitivity training! It's like offering a coupon to a serial arsonist. Trump's approach works because it treats the symptom and the disease. You want less fentanyl? Make trafficking it a terminal career choice.

Here's the inconvenient truth the critics ignore. Since September, this campaign has eliminated 25 narco vessels and nearly 100 traffickers. As someone who'd rather see that garbage incinerated at sea than in American veins, I call that progress. But sure, let's hear more from the folks who think subpoenas stop cartels. Pro tip, they don't. Hell, they can't even stop Hunter Biden from memorizing every coke dealer in LA.

The Venezuelan regime and Colombian officials are whining about, 'escalation' and 'regime change' bahamas please. When Maduro stops lining his pockets with drug cash and Colombian ports stop leaking cocaine like broken faucets, maybe they'll earn a seat at the adults table. Until then, stay salty.

Look, I get it. Watching politicians suddenly discover their inner Neville Chamberlain whenever Trump flexes American muscle is entertaining in a tragic clown show sort of way. But our communities are burning. Kids are dying in school bathrooms. If blowing up some junk pontoons saves one teenager in Ohio from swallowing a fake Percocet packed with enough fentanyl to drop a rhino, that's not just legal. It's moral.

The real scandal here isn't the strikes. It's that it took until 2025 for someone to finally treat these cartels like ISIS with better PR. The last administration's idea of border security was handing out water bottles. We tried that. It failed. Miserably. Now we're trying the 'stop them before they reach the border' method. Shocking twist, it actually works.

Cue the hand wringing about civilian casualties. Except Southern Command has been crystal clear. These were confirmed narco vessels on known trafficking routes. No fishing boats. No confused tourists. Just professional poison peddlers who picked the wrong customer base. American streets aren't Costco for cartels. And Trump isn't running a membership rewards program.

I'll leave you with this thought. Every gram of fentanyl these boats carried represented another American life in the crosshairs. Another family shattered. Another community weeping. If drowning that garbage in the Pacific along with the dirtbags smuggling it isn't justifiable defense, then the definition of national security needs an update. Preferably before the next shipment lands.

So yeah, keep debating the finer points of maritime law. Meanwhile, Trump's actually doing something. And last I checked, doing something beats cross examining your own subpoenas while kids die. But hey, that's just me. A gal who remembers what leadership looks like. Even if DC forgot.