Execution Over Prosecution: Illegal Murders in the Name of Anti-‘NarcoTerrorism’ by the U.S. Military

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” – Psalm 103:8

“Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” – Amos 5:24

Is it just me, or is the American government the only nation on earth that finds ever-creative ways to lock up, starve, detain, poison, invade, or kill mostly melanated humans all over the world? Aren’t there any ‘bad’ Europeans on earth for us to find? Humans are flawed beings, yet this current administration has canvased an image of only Latinos, black and brown evil-doers, not just in the U.S. and the Caribbean, but globally. Doesn’t our national narrative of the “war on drugs” deserve to confront a far deeper truth: massive, racialized state violence covered in the cloak of counternarcotics?

Narcoterrorism
According to EBSCO research, Narcoterrorism is a term coined by former Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry in 1983 to describe attacks by drug traffickers on his police force. In this context, narcoterrorism referred to drug traffickers' attempts to influence government officials through intimidation and violence. Drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar is commonly cited as having been a narcoterrorist. Authorities credit Escobar for the violent murders of hundreds of government officials and police officers.

The world is taking notice. Human-rights monitors at Amnesty International warn that the recent lethal operations by the United States Southern Command constitute extrajudicial executions, not law-enforcement interdiction.United Nations experts agree.Meanwhile, inside the U.S., little serious debate is happening about the logic: if so-called “fentanyl traffickers” are truly the enemy, where is the due process? Why are black and brown lives given a kill zone rather than a courtroom?

The Targeting of Black and Brown Bodies

Across both the first and second terms of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, the militarization of drug policy has disproportionately targeted Latin America, the Caribbean, and by extension, Black and brown communities. Boats in international waters, not arrested and tried, but bombed and sunk. Lives extinguished, stories uninvestigated. On September 3, 2025, the U.S. military struck a boat allegedly smuggling from Venezuela, killing 11 people, in a campaign that human-rights experts say lacks legal justification.

These operations are not simple “drug interdictions”; they are framed by the U.S. government as part of an “armed conflict” against cartels.In other words, the men, women, and children on these vessels are being treated as unlawful combatants, not suspects with rights. The logic flows: you are a melanated person somewhere on a boat or in a field, and our military says you’re a “narco-terrorist” — therefore, no trial, no capture, just execution.

And let’s face it: most of the so-called “carriers” of the deadly drug cocktail known as fentanyl aren’t submarines crossing the Pacific — they’re networks inside and across our southern border, often with roots in Mexico or synthesized in China. Yet U.S. military missiles are raining down on Caribbean waters. The biggest carriers of that drug into the U.S. are China (with whom Trump recently met) and Mexico, but we are killing people on boats coming into the U.S. waters.

The U.S. is deploying warships and drone strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, bypassing the norms of maritime law enforcement usually administered by the United States Coast Guard or law enforcement agencies. Yet here we are, calling it “counternarcotics” while introducing a kill-first doctrine that many nations reserve for wars. The Caribbean and eastern Pacific are not warzones.

The Double Standard and the Color Line

Why are the victims of this policy predominantly brown and black? Because U.S. policing, domestic and abroad, has long targeted those communities: mass incarceration for black men, stop-and-frisk for brown youth, militarized raids for melanated immigrants. Abroad, the same logic plays out: missions in Latin America and the Caribbean are treated as theatres for lethal intervention rather than for collaboration. The narrative of the “bad actor” is always: poor, foreign, melanated. Meanwhile, vast networks rooted in global supply chains — financial hubs in Europe, chemical precursors in China — remain largely untouched.

This is not oversight. It is policy. The term “narco-terrorism” is a convenient label used to justify the extraordinary against the browns and blacks, while the enforcement against white-dominated or European-based networks remains toothless. The drug supply-side is global; why is the death-side so narrowly targeted?

Solutions: Justice, not just bombs

We must demand a paradigm shift. First, Congress must reassert its oversight role and halt these extrajudicial air and sea strikes. Amnesty International declares that authorizing them would not make them lawful.Second: The U.S. must reintroduce due process to its counternarcotics approach — capture, trial, conviction, not execution. Third: Reform drug policy from war to health. As the international NGO notes: “decades of harsh laws … have led to mass incarceration, disease, suffering and violence.”Amnesty International Fourth: The U.S. must face its own racialized history of enforcement — domestic and foreign — and dismantle the color-coded logic of who gets execution vs. who gets indictment.

Finally: Invest in real solutions. Treatment, prevention, and economic opportunity in communities ravaged by the drug trade. Diplomatic cooperation aimed at supply-chain accountability rather than missile strikes aimed at vulnerable persons. A world where melanated lives are not expendable in the name of “national security.”

A Final Word of Faith

We must remember that every human life is sacred. The execution of a fellow human being without trial or accountability is contrary to the spirit of justice God commands. As Amos tells us in scripture: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” When our policy treats people as dispensable, we fail that river of justice. To these and historically many other military and law enforcement members in the U.S. justice isnt color blinds as she comes harder and swifter on black and brown citizens.

It is time to end execution over prosecution — and to end the U.S. government’s denial of the value of Black and brown lives abroad and on U.S. soil. We stand at a moral crossroad. Will we continue the pattern of foreign kills, or will we choose law, accountability, and healing? As Psalm 103 reminds us: the Lord is merciful and gracious — and so must we be.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edmond W. Davis is a Social Historian, Speaker, Collegiate Professor, International Journalist, and former Director of the Derek Olivier Research Institute. He is an expert on various historical and emotional intelligence topics. He’s globally known for his work as a researcher regarding the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and Airwomen. He’s the Founder and Executive Director of America’s first & only National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest.