Episode Details

A boat explodes on a distant horizon and we’re told it was necessary. Necessary for whom, and by what law? We dig into the mounting drone strikes on alleged drug boats, the leap from criminal enforcement to wartime force, and the quiet way the 2001 AUMF keeps getting stretched from Afghanistan to the Caribbean and Pacific. With Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, we interrogate the legal, strategic, and human costs of turning cartels into “terrorists” and the Americas into a boundless battlefield.

The Venezuela narrative doesn’t add up. If this were about drugs, the data would point elsewhere; instead, energy, geography, and influence sit in plain view. We map how a regime change push could spiral: urban resistance, regional backlash, kidnappings of U.S. citizens and residents, and migration shocks at the U.S. border. Add a strike off Colombia’s Pacific coast as Bogotá breaks with Israel, and the story looks less like interdiction and more like signaling and narrative management. When policy is built on labels, not limits, blowback is only a matter of time.

Gaza looms over all of this. A brittle ceasefire, hardline rhetoric, and a shuttle of U.S. political envoys expose how deeply our credibility is tied to open-ended war. Kwiatkowski argues Congress must reclaim war powers to restore lawful thresholds for lethal force and force the executive to articulate achievable goals. Otherwise, we trade due process for drones, and strategy for spectacle. If you care about sovereignty, limits, and outcomes that don’t haunt the next decade, this is a conversation to hear.

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