Sen. Rand Paul’s blunt questioning of recent U.S. strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats on Rob Schmitt Tonight should sober every patriot who believes in limited government and the rule of law. Paul told Newsmax that while nobody loves drug traffickers, the United States cannot slide into a habit of executing people at sea without identity, evidence, or trial — a practice that smacks of empire, not constitutional government.
The facts on the water are troubling: multiple U.S. strikes have been carried out against suspected smuggling vessels, with reports indicating at least 19–21 strikes and dozens killed over the last few months as the administration ramps up interdiction efforts. Those operations, according to reporting, even included a disputed follow-up strike that may have hit survivors of an initial attack — a detail that raises real legal and moral alarms.
Americans who cherish both order and liberty should agree on two things at once: we must stop the flow of fentanyl and cartel poison into our communities, but we must also preserve the legal norms that separate a free republic from a warlord. Paul has repeatedly warned that when we treat criminal syndicates as enemy combatants without a congressional declaration or transparent legal basis, we blur the line between policing and war, and we set dangerous precedents for future executive overreach.
It is not merely philosophical hair-splitting to insist on evidence and process. Independent checks on these strikes are mounting in Congress, with lawmakers preparing War Powers measures to force a vote if the administration pursues military actions against Venezuela without proper authorization — a sign that even some Republicans are uneasily watching the White House’s new playbook. The American people deserve clear answers: who authorized each strike, what evidence tied those vessels to drug shipments headed for U.S. streets, and why wasn’t traditional interdiction attempted first?
Sen. Paul’s argument also rests on practical grounds: maritime interdiction by law enforcement routinely finds innocent people, and military kinetic action in international waters risks killing innocents and creating international incidents. His point about Coast Guard boarding statistics, that a significant fraction of stops find no contraband, underscores the danger of leaping to lethal force instead of arrest, prosecution, and due process. Conservatives who care about both security and civil liberties should find that persuasive.
Make no mistake: defending our citizens and securing our borders is a conservative priority, not a partisan afterthought. But defending America also means defending the Constitution, including Congress’s exclusive power to declare war and the fundamental right to due process that separates us from dictators and terrorists. If the administration wants a broader strike campaign, it should come to Congress with evidence and a request for authorization — not unilateral assumptions that any boat tied to Venezuela is ipso facto a lawful target.
Now is the time for grassroots conservatives and lawmakers alike to insist on transparency, restraint, and constitutional fidelity. Push your senators and representatives to demand briefings, to insist on legal justification, and to vote if the president seeks to widen military operations — because liberty without security is folly, and security without liberty is tyranny. If we lose our principles in the name of expediency, we will have surrendered the very freedoms that make America worth defending.
