Washington's so-called 'War on Drugs' targeting Colombia, Venezuela

The U.S.S. Gravely is seen in this photo released on February 13, 2024. (By AP)

Colombia has in recent weeks become the subject of the expanded hostile US military campaign in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean.

Though Venezuela is the primary target, President Donald Trump slandered his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, calling him an illegal drug leader.

• Tensions grow as US extends 'war on drugs' in Columbia 
  

In reality, Washington's so-called 'War on Drugs' has been waged here for more than four decades.

More than $12 billion has been invested in Plan Colombia; to strengthen the police, maintain helicopters, criminalize the peasantry, and wage the so-called war on drugs, which has been going on for more than 40 years.

The violent onslaught we are seeing today is not new. It's a very old process.

It has undoubtedly failed.

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Plan Colombia, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000, was supposed to combat drug cartels.

However, many believe the country would have been better off without the years of extensive US presence, including that of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA.

It's no secret that the DEA regulates the drug trafficking market. Yes, that's a very serious assertion, but it is very true.

There has been more than one case of people sentenced and prosecuted by the US Justice system itself, where it has been proven the way in which they agree on which shipments pass and which do not.

So the DEA, in addition to spying and interfering, not only in Colombian sovereignty, but also in Venezuelan sovereignty, plays the role of regulating the international cocaine market.

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• Colombia’s president slams US sanctions as ‘paradoxical’, hails Colombia’s anti-narcotics efforts 
  

Colombia's social movements have long been vocal critics of US interference in the country and its historic link to paramilitarism and drug trafficking.

Now, this thing they came up with about controlling ships to prevent drugs from entering the United States is just an excuse to justify direct aggression against Venezuela and now Colombia, which is also in imminent danger of being attacked.

Colombian territory has been used to establish military bases and military technical personnel to generate paramilitary groups here as a strategy to exterminate social movements.

But today, through Plan Colombia and the war on drugs, they have justified any type of aggression against the peoples of Latin America.

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• Trump calls Colombian president 'illegal drug leader', cuts aid 
  

Experts and communities agree that the terror attacks on boats at sea are not addressing US drug consumption related deaths or any real problem, and see it as just an extension of the historic crime committed by Washington against the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America.