Fentanyl May Be Classified As WMD, US Begins Bombing Ottawa In Five Minutes

Kidding! Kidding, Canadian friends!

Ah, those were the days. Screenshot courtesy of C-SPAN.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the beginning of George W. Bush’s clusterfuck of an invasion of Iraq. It was on March 19, 2003, that America and her allies (including Canada) began killing and badly wounding scores of people — and then hundreds of thousands — who were then unable to greet us as liberators, what with us having liberated them from their limbs and their lives.

Twenty-two years! We’re sure America will find those weapons of mass destruction that were the ostensible casus belli for the war any day now.

While we wait, we can cast our eyes to another WMD. Or at least it will reportedly be classified as one in an executive order from Donald Trump that he may sign as early as next week.

Ha ha, no, not whatever combination of industrial-strength chemicals keeps Trump’s golden helmet of hair stiffer than Ötzi before he thawed out. We’re talking about fentanyl, the much-discussed synthetic opioid that has wreaked all sorts of havoc on American life.

Marisa Kabas broke the story, which has been rumored to be in the works for a while. The difference is that Kabas actually got an early draft of the executive order that is circulating through various governmental departments. The EO has all the seriousness the subject deserves, combined with some of the trademark overblown bombast that Trump’s people seem to love:

As President of the United States, my highest duty is the defense of the country and its citizens. I will not stand by and allow our citizens to be poisoned by illicit drugs from other countries that are flooding into our country, having our law trampled upon, our communities to be ravaged, or our families to be destroyed. Accordingly, I declare illicit fentanyl to be a Weapon of Mass Destruction as defined in 50 U.S.C. Section 2902

It’s a good thing they threw the word illicit in there. Otherwise, every hospital in America would immediately be a crime scene.

If classifying fentanyl as a WMD was the only effect of this order, we could all be a little less worried. It’s the next part of the order that gives us pause:

Within 14 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take all appropriate action, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to make operational recommendations to implement this order.

It’s those two words: “operational recommendations.” That feels weirdly vague and vaguely ominous. Combine that with the Secretary of DHS, Kristi Noem, being a dog-murdering psychopath who has spent her first two months on the job going on immigration raids so she can strut on camera, along with our Secretary of State being a feckless weenie and our Attorney General being a bombastic try-hard, and you have a recipe for some real dangerous stuff.

And indeed, Kabas’s source for the leak speculates that the EO is yet one more step to military operations in Mexico and Canada under the Authorization for Use of Military Force that was passed right after September 11 to give Dubya more control over the response to al-Qaeda, and has been used by every president since for all sorts of military action. Boy, we knew the AUMF was going to come back to bite us all in the ass. If only Congress had agreed, then or ever.

Trump has been threatening cartels with military action for some time now, designating them as terrorist organizations and raising the possibility of sending American Special Forces across the Mexican border to assassinate cartel leaders. His administration has also ramped up some of its rhetoric directed at — and we still can’t believe we’re typing this — friggin’ Canada, claiming it has been overrun by drug cartels.

A Czar Is Born

No One Needs To Lie About Fentanyl To Make It Seem More Bad, It's Already Bad

Well, sure. The truth is that Canada has not suddenly turned into a lawless narco-state. Last year, Border Patrol seized all of 43 pounds of fentanyl at the northern border, which is .2 percent of the more than 21,000 pounds seized at the Mexican border. But it’s going to be hard to justify drone-striking some alleged stash house in Edmonton for such minimal results. Best to claim the entire nation is starring in a reboot of “Ozark” so Trump can order all those tough manly Special Forces types to gear up and go do some commando shit that looks really cool through night vision goggles.

In short, as far as Canada is concerned, the fentanyl problem is basically made up. There is a problem with Mexico, but both countries are our closest neighbors and allies, and they are really pissed off that the United States keeps threatening their sovereign territory. But the Trump administration just keeps steering towards that cliff’s edge.

The idea of “reclassifying fentanyl as a WMD” has been raised a couple of times in recent years, but didn’t gain any traction. Possibly because it seems incredibly stupid to turn what is really a public health crisis into a military operation. Now Trump is in the White House with a retinue full of people who like to play-act as tough guys, so here we are.

[The Handbasket / CNN]

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