This cartoon is by me and Nadine Scholtes.
Like a lot of people, I’ve been reading the news about Trump’s attacks on so-called “narco terrorists” with horror.
From an ACLU press release:
Not only does the administration claim to have sweeping power to target and kill U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, but it makes the extraordinary claim that the court has no role in reviewing that power or the legal standards that apply… If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state.
Quoting that press release is a bit sneaky of me, because it’s from 2010, about the Obama administration’s drone strikes outside of combat zones. Those drone strikes killed hundreds or thousands of civilians; it’s hard to know precisely how many civilians were killed, since the official Obama administration numbers simply counted all adult men, without regard for who they were or what they did, as fighters and legitimate targets.
I do see some distinction between Obama’s drone strikes and Trump’s. At one level, I simply trust Obama more than I do Trump (a bar so low you’d need a shovel). I find it easier to imagine Trump calling for his peaceful political enemies to be killed. (Oh, wait, I don’t have to imagine it.)
Another difference: Obama’s strikes were aimed, at least in theory, at the Taliban and Al Qaeda, two groups that actually exist and had committed serious terrorist attacks on Americans. In contrast, Trump’s strikes are against the Cartel de lose Soles, a group that “is probably not a terrorist organisation as most people understand them. Whether it is even an organisation in a formal sense is also up for debate.”
But I’m also disturbed at the similarities. Both campaigns killed innocent civilians (a definite fact for Obama, and highly likely for Trump).
Both Obama and Trump claimed a legally murky right to pick targets for extrajudicial killing without any review from courts or Congress. That’s more power than I wanted Obama to have, and it’s certainly more power than I want Trump to have.
Even if you think that Obama’s drone strikes were justifiable, it’s hard to deny that the way they were done – without oversight, and with claims of being unanswerable to other branches of government – set a terrible precedent.
The U.S. shouldn’t be ruled by an emperor who can arbitrarily choose to kill people with a thumb’s down.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has five panels. They show two people, a Black woman wearing a white turtleneck, and a white woman wearing a red MAGA cap, talking in a park.
PANEL 1
Turtleneck is holding a smartphone and speaking angrily. Red Cap is taken a bit aback.
TURTLENECK: Look at this! Trump had the Navy shoot another boat of “narco-terrorists” in international waters! No evidence, no trial, just an execution!
PANEL 2
Turtleneck points at Red Cap accusingly; Red Cap raises her palms placatingly.
TURTLENECK: How can you condone this? What’s wrong with you?
RED CAP: Calm down! There’s no need to be uncivil! We can disagree and still be reasonable.
PANEL 3
Turtleneck, still angry, walks away muttering; Red Cap smiles and waves bye.
TURTLENECK: Mumble grumble stupidnazi fascists
RED CAP: Go touch some grass. Bye!
PANEL 4
Red Cap continues smiling and waving bye.
PANEL 5
Still smiling and waving, Red Cap is making a call on her cell phone.
RED CAP: Hello, U.S. Navy? I’m calling to report a narco-terrorist.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken Fat” is obsolete cartoonists’ lingo for Eater Eggs.
PANEL 1 – A happy little mouse is holding a pink balloon. Far in the background, a bird soars.
PANEL 2 – The mouse, now sad, has lost its balloon, which floats into the sky. The bird flies to the balloon.
PANEL 3 – The bird returns the balloon to the again-happy mouse.
PANEL 4 – The MAGA hat reads “Make America Spell Agian”
PANEL 5 – The MAGA hat reads “Mash America’s Grapes Again”
I feel like, with this one, I could convince a Trump supporter it’s bad.
I haven’t tried it yet, but most people oppose murder, and there’s a rock solid case that this is murder that I, as an attorney, am in a prime position to make.
Also:
“‘Chicken Fat’ is obsolete cartoonists’ lingo for Eater Eggs.”
Apparently the Make America Spell Again campaign has yet to bear fruit. ;-)
I’m always happy to see a Barry/Nadine collaboration!
My gut reaction when reading the comic was “This seems a lot more timely than most of these comics.” The bombings are a recent news story and we don’t know how long we’ll last, in contrast with a lot of other Lefty Cartoons/Amptoons which cover issues that remain relevant for decades.
But I jumped when I read the description and remembered that oh, right, this happened under Obama too. It’s quite likely Trump will continue bombing civilians for the remainder of his presidency, and that future Republican presidents and some future Democratic presidents will do so as well. Also, Maga hats may well outlive Trump.
At any rate, this comic is probably going to age better than the comics about Clinton’s Iraq sanctions.
Back in 2010 when my American friends were upset about Obama’s actions, they emphasised heavily that he was killing American citizens, and that this made it worse. They admitted that in a hypothetical situation where the President was extrajudicially killing non-citizens, it wouldn’t be so bad.
That situation is now no longer hypothetical. (Not that it waas actually hypothetical in 2010, but that’s another story).
Watcher – This may not apply to your friends, but during Obama’s term, my impression was that part of the reason activists put special emphasis on American victims was because they believed this was more likely to get US news agencies to cover the issue.
Beth – Yes, I generally try to do “evergreen” comics, rather than “in the news” comics. But sometimes I just can resist doing comics inspired by current events.
And also, you’re correct – sadly, I can probably keep this cartoon current for quite a while with only minor wording changes now and then. :-(
(And also, you’re right that the Clinton Iraq sanctions cartoons didn’t age too well. I do think those cartoons are more exaggerated than they are completely wrong, however.)
Schroeder:
LOL!
Normally, I’d go and correct the typo, but you’ve gone and made it funny so I’m going to just leave it as is. :-p
I am curious now, where can I view the Clinton Iraq sanctions comics?
@Watcher: Much as I would like to have Obama or Clinton or even Dubya* back rather than the current wannabe dictator, I recognize them all as having contributed to the current mess in one way or another. Obama continued extra-judicial killing (I don’t think he started it…not sure who did…possibly Washington for all I know). Dubya established that the US is willing to use torture, up front and without even trying to hide it. Clinton was an underqualified populist. Yeah, Trump is the cumulation of a long slide from democracy, not the start of it, but he’s accelerating the process.
*Not Reagan though. Reagan is the only modern president who gives Trump a run for his money in terms of destruction of the country.
@Watcher
If you scroll through Barry’s old cartoons on leftycartoons.com, some of the old ones are about Clinton, while some of them could have been written yesterday. Here’s page 32 (the oldest as of this writing).
@beth: Thank you
Am I the only one who read “Beware the narcoterrorists” and thought “beware the jabberwock”?
I heavily criticized Obama for his drone strikes, but I do think there are legal (maybe not moral[?]) differences even beyond what you list.
First, Obama’s strikes–as bad as they were morally–were probably legal, since Congress infamously authorized the use of military force against Al Qaeda and related forces.
“[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
That is shockingly broad language that might well have legally authorized Obama’s strikes.
Second, there is, at least, a good faith case to argue that Al Qaeda and related groups were at war with the United States (to the extent that a non-state actor can wage war at all).
With the Trump strikes, there is no good faith argument that these groups are at war with us or that the people in the boats are combatants under LOAC. Beyond “the president’s words are magic,” I haven’t even heard anyone make the case in good faith.
They can’t even make the already insane case that fentanyl is a weapon of war in good faith because the people Trump is murdering in the Caribbean are trafficking cocaine, not fentanyl.
I’m not sure how much all this matters, though. As I said, I’m willing to bite the bullet that both Trump and Obama murdered people. I bit that bullet before Trump was reelected. But… FWIW.
“Fentanyl is a weapon of war” just seems extra ridiculous when paired with the demand to loosen regulations on rat poisoning and pesticides. Arsenic is much, much more toxic than fentanyl. And Arsenic can also hurt you if it touches you externally, and it can damage the environment. And yet, it’s not even a controlled substance, let alone schedule 1.
Mark Galeoitti, writing about Putin’s Russia in 2010, said there was a meta-policy of “securitisation”, where every state concern was elevated to a security concern. Issues like birth rates, healthcare provision and road building were brought into the military-security realm through government rhetoric using tenuous connections between some future population/healthcare/transport crisis and the existence of the Russian state.
I remember at the time I read it thinking that this was a very cogent observation and this phenomenon was in no way limited to Russia. We saw a similar wave of “securitisation” under Bush, but now it is going another step, with Trump blatantly securitising health crises, describing drug smuggling organisations as terrorist groups and fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
The definition of “terrorist” was always extremely sketchy and it has been used as a political football for a long time – with, for example, some feminists defining MRA groups as “terrorist” and asking the government to do the same. But “weapon of mass destruction”, up until now, had a definition that was generally pretty solid. There was debate about whether or not Saddam had WMD but that was a debate about what he had, not what a WMD actually was (and it was resolved pretty conclusively once more facts came out, which is a clear sign that the term isn’t contested). But we can only assume, when Trump calls fentanyl a WMD, that to him WMD just means “a thing I don’t like and want to say I don’t like on TV”.
Of course this definition works the other way – know we’re to believe that a nuclear bomb going off isn’t any worse than a fentanyl overdose.
Fun addendum: Russia used fentanyl against the Moscow theatre hostage takers, so according to Trump, Russia is guilty of using WMD against its own citizens!
Beth:
“Arsenic is much, much more toxic than fentanyl.”
Say what? Show me the math on that one, please. From what I’m reading fentanyl is at least 2 or 3 order of magnitude more lethal than arsenic.
Watcher:
“Trump calls fentanyl a WMD, that to him WMD just means ‘a thing I don’t like and want to say I don’t like on TV’.”
Actually, what I think WMD means to Pres. Trump is “something that kills a lot of people”.
So cancer is an WMD, in President Trump’s view?
How about cars?
How about cows? Or hippos? Or tobacco? Or industrial pollution? Or…
By that logic, nuclear bombs are not an WMD, since they haven’t killed anybody for decades.
Time is the ultimate WMD. Abolish the fourth dimension!
Amp:
Cancer is not a weapon, it’s a disease. A fast-acting cancer-causing agent WOULD be a WMD if it was released against an enemy population.
Jacqueline:
I think if you got a herd of cows together and stampeded them into a crowd you might be able to call the herd a WMD. Possibly. Not sure what the numerical threshold for “a lot” is here.
Watcher:
Nuclear bombs are a WMD because they kill a lot of people when used. By your logic only the 0.003% of firearms in civilian hands that are used each year to commit murder are weapons and the rest are not.
Dianne:
I realize the Fourth Dimension was not to everyone’s taste but I never figured you for someone who would censor the arts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROkAdC8ARKo
Fentanyl’s not a weapon, it’s a medication. Used properly, it can relieve pain when nothing else does. Actually, I’m having difficulty figuring out how to use it as a weapon of mass destruction per se. Illicit fentanyl is more a serial killer than a mass murderer. I would welcome actual attempts to address the issues that lead to fentanyl addiction and death. Labeling it a WMD and killing people who are not actually even trafficking it is not going to help, though.
How about if it’s released on a population that is not considered an enemy? For example, release of carcinogenic agents into the water supply of a city not because the releaser considered them enemies to be killed, but because they didn’t care what happened to the people downstream? Or setting off a test bomb downwind of a population center?
@RonF: Don’t give me this “by my logic” bullshit, I wasn’t the one calling fentanyl a WMD. I know exactly what a WMD is, thank you. It’s a shame the most powerful man in the world, doesn’t.
@Dianne: There is I believe one example of fentanyl being used as a weapon – in the Moscow theatre siege in 2002, it’s believed (although not confirmed) that the gas that the Russian military used on the theatre was a form of weaponised fentanyl. It’s further believed (although again, not confirmed, because data is hard to get) that most of the hostages, more than 100 of whom died, died from the effects of the fentanyl.
So yeah, fentanyl can be a weapon, and has been, and could again be one. But even as horrific as the Moscow theatre siege was, it isn’t WMD level horrific.
@Watcher: Good point. Not sure what they did. Maybe aerosolized it? Fentanyl is a very strong narcotic, so it sounds possible at least.
Yeah it was aerosolised at least – survivors say they didn’t see it being deployed in any way, people just started to collapse, so it was probably pumped into the theatre as a gas. It may have been cut with something else for fast deployment. I am very far from an expert, though! This is just what analyses I’ve read say.
In theory any anesthetic gas could be used this way if you had enough of it. But fentanyl, as one of the strongest, is ideal. (Plus Russia is a major producer of it, and the origin of a lot of the fentanyl that ends up in Europe. Better kidnap Putin, I guess).
Fentanyl is a weapon!!! That’s an opinion, for sure.
“Don’t give me this “by my logic” bullshit, I wasn’t the one calling fentanyl a WMD.”
Ah, you are correct. I should have said “By that logic ….” My apologies.
While I agree in principle with most of the thought behind the comic, I think it is important to say the obvious: The people in these boats are almost certainly smuggling illegal drugs, and those drugs are the leading cause for death in Americans aged 18 to 45. More than guns, Automobile accidents, and peak Covid combined.
I’m not saying that carries the death penalty, I’m not saying I agree with what the administration is doing… But we’re not talking about law abiding people out for a cruise. These are people directly benefiting off the suffering of millions and deaths of hundreds of thousands. Let’s not conflate them with people expressing opinions on extrajudicial killings.
So you said that the people in those boats were almost certainly smuggling drugs which the leading cause for death in Americans 18-45, linking to an article about fentanyl.
From a CATO article (CATO’s a right-wing libertarian org who I wouldn’t trust on everything, but in this quote the sources they’re citing are credible and mainstream):
Even if they were smuggling drugs, which they may have been, it’s unlikely they were smuggling any significant quantity of fentanyl, and very likely none at all.
But also: What does any of this matter? It’s not a capital crime. And even if it were, you don’t actually know if they were guilty, because there was no trial. And the people on board these boats – even if they were smuggling drugs – were probably low-level employees who didn’t make much money and may not have made any other options.
You’re trying to justify the unjustifiable.
I mean…. I literally said the opposite:
I’ll admit I assumed fentanyl, I’m not sure why, maybe it’s my media diet. Regardless, on looking into it, it’s more likely cocaine, and that undercuts a lot of my more fraught people-are-dying point.
But like you said: That’s not really the point. You’re absolutely right: The administration is absolutely using a threadbare theory of the law to justify this, and even if they can legally hold it up, they still can’t morally hold it up.
And I’m also right: The people in those boats are criminals. They are not the same as law abiding people saying that those criminals should not be extrajudicially killed, and even the most blinkered Trump supporters aren’t confused by that. Which is a comment on your fourth panel.
I’m tempted to misread this as you saying you assumed fentanyl, not because of your media diet, but because you’re taking so much cocaine. :-p
As for my fourth panel, this administration, and its supporters, have frequently falsely accused political opponents as being criminals, terrorist supporters, and terrorists. Recent examples including Trump calling Renee Good a “domestic terrorist”; a Trump administration official (Todd Blanche) accused Tim Walz and Jacob Frey of “terrorism”; slightly less recently, Trump signed an executive order attempting to classify antifa as a terrorist organization. (That’s not even remotely a comprehensive list).
So I think panel four is justified and (within the expected exaggeration of political cartoons) fair.
@Ampersand: I am not an expert but I’ve read that, to the extent Venezuela is involved in drug trafficking, the destination is often Europe, not the USA.
@Corso:
What makes you think that? This is a serious question. I’ve never seen any evidence other than the administration’s assertion that the people they’re murdering are smuggling drugs. If there is some, I’d like to at least know that. The fact that Trump kept musing that “it’s a bad day to be a fisherman” suggests the opposite: That they weren’t making any effort to determine whether the people in the boats were smuggling drugs or just innocent people out for a cruise before they bombed their boats and then sent a second bomb if there were signs of survivors to ensure that no witnesses survived.
According to the CDC, in 2018-2023, the rate of deaths in people age 15-44 due to transportation accidents was 16.5/100,000. The rate of death due to accidental poisoning with narcotics, hallucinogens, and drugs not elsewhere classified (which I am assuming is about 99% narcotics, including fentanyl, but don’t have the actual breakdown for), is 16.2/100,000. Shockingly, horrifyingly high numbers both, but does the rate of deaths due to transportation accidents justify bombing tesla outlets? That seems to be the argument you are presenting.
Also re fentanyl and other narcotics: The CDC under Biden was making moves to reduce the number of deaths due to narcotics using public health measures such as making narcan readily available and treatment more accessible. With some success. This all stopped when RFK came in since his priority is torturing babies to death, not stopping people from overdosing. (If you object that death due to hepatic failure is not torture, I will explain what it is like to you. Not to mention hepatic cancer, which is painful enough that people dying of it end up on massive amounts of…fentanyl*.)
*Transdermal fentanyl is highly effective as pain control. Other opiates can be too. The Sacklers are sleazy, as are drug smugglers, but opiates are needed.