The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.
“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.
Vance added: “Democrats: let’s send your kids to die in Russia. Republicans: actually let’s protect our people from the scum of the earth.”
Donald Trump has vowed additional military action against purported traffickers, who are not military targets, after the boat strike, saying “there’s more where that came from”.
The controversial attack inflamed already-high tensions between the US and Venezuela. In August Trump dispatched war ships and marines to the Caribbean, which his supporters say is in aid of efforts to oust Venezuelan’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. On Friday, reports revealed that Trump was sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to support US military action against drug traffickers.
Some fear the developments presage full military conflict between Venezuelan and US service members. Last month, the US offered a $50m bounty for Maduro, twice what it offered for Osama bin Laden, and in July signed a secret mandate approving military action against Latin American cartels deemed terrorist organizations, such as the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which Trump officials have claimed Maduro leads.
Trump also framed the boat attack as military activity against “terrorists” in subsequent statements on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,” he said. “The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike … Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”
The Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate committee on homeland security and government affairs, slammed Vance’s comments.
“JD ‘I don’t give a shit’ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the ‘highest and best use of the military.’ Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X, alluding to Harper Lee’s 1960 novel about a wrongly convicted Black man who is killed as he tries to escape prison.
“Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”
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