Might Makes Right

The Wall Street Journal wrote that in our “new age of empire… the Trump administration has asserted a right to own other people’s land based on the fact of American power.”

The Council of Foreign Relations observed, Emperor Trump “has bombed Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, [Venezuela] and Yemen, and attacked alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific.” On February 14th, the New York Times reported, “A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea.” Three days later, the Times covered “the deadliest day of strikes this year,” when “U.S. forces blew up three boats overnight, killing 11 men.”

On February 20th, the Times wrote, “The U.S. military… blew up a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three people. The strike raised the death toll… to at least 147.” Since September, there have been 43 U.S. military attacks in that region. While legal specialists repeat that “the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings.”

The Financial Times reported that in Somalia, the Trump administration “mounted more than 100 strikes [in 2025].”

In May 2025, US Admiral James Kilby admitted that “Washington had launched ‘the largest air strike in the history of the world — a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds from a single aircraft carrier — into Somalia.’”

We dropped 60 tons of bombs on one of the poorest countries in the world.

Nick Turse reported that President Trump’s “administration launched 208 attacks [in Somalia] from 2017 to 2021. America’s long-running, undeclared war in Somalia has become a key driver of violence in that country.” Elizabeth Schmidt wrote, “Far from helping Somalis, the long, destructive history of US intervention since the 1970s has merely worsened their country’s deep crisis and fueled the rise of the terrorist group al-Shabaab.”

Turse reported, “U.S. officials were aware of structural defects in American efforts in Africa from the earliest days of the conflict.” The Pentagon acknowledged its shadow war in Somalia had “fundamental flaws… for nearly 20 years.”

Emperor Trump and his War Department continued to bomb Somalia even when the World Food Programme admitted, “Somalia is facing one of the most complex hunger crises… [as] nearly one million women, men, and children [experience] severe hunger.”

Turse reported last week that “The Trump administration is increasing the U.S. military’s presence in Nigeria, where decades of American military assistance has coincided with increased violence and instability.” The reasons are quite obvious. General Charles Wald explained that “a key mission for U.S. forces [in Africa] would be to insure that Nigeria’s oilfields, which in the future could account for as much as 25 percent of all U.S. oil imports, are secure.”

This was also the reason for the U.S. shadow war in Somalia. Schmidt wrote, “Somalia is strategically located on the Horn of Africa, which oversees Middle Eastern natural gas and oil routes.”

Democratic and Republican administrations default to a “failed military policy of endless war,” that the taxpayers fund, while weapon corporations get richer.

-Anton Porcari

Print this entry