The United States military just conducted a strike against narco-terrorists operating in the Eastern Pacific. Not a sternly-worded letter. Not a UN resolution. Not a “whole of government approach” that involves seven agencies and zero results. An actual military strike on actual drug traffickers who’ve been poisoning our communities for decades.

But sure, tell me again how designating cartels as terrorist organizations was “reckless” and “inflammatory.” I seem to remember a whole lot of very serious people on CNN explaining why treating the people who kill 100,000 Americans a year with fentanyl as enemies was somehow controversial. Weird how quiet they are today.

Here’s what happened: the Trump administration, which designated major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, authorized military assets to hunt cartel operations in the open ocean. Not at the border. Not in some dusty town in Mexico where we have to pretend we’re respecting sovereignty. In the Eastern Pacific, where these animals run their supply chains like a Fortune 500 company — except their product kills your kids.

The strike targeted drug trafficking infrastructure that’s been operating with near-impunity for years. Under Obama, we “monitored” them. Under Biden, we pretended they didn’t exist while processing their customers at the border with a smile and a bus ticket to wherever they wanted to go. Under Trump? We blow them up.

Let’s talk about what changed. For years — decades, really — the official position of the United States government was that drug cartels were a “law enforcement problem.” That’s Washington-speak for “we’re not going to do anything serious about it.” You’d get the occasional DEA bust, some guy in a suit doing a press conference next to a table of seized drugs, everyone pats themselves on the back, and then the cartels just ship ten times more the next week.

The cartels got so comfortable, they started hanging bodies from bridges as advertising. They took over entire Mexican states. They built submarines — actual submarines — to move cocaine. They recruited children as soldiers. They dissolved people in acid. And our response? “Well, it’s complicated. Mexico is a sovereign nation. We need to work through diplomatic channels.”

You know what diplomatic channels got us? 100,000 dead Americans per year from overdoses. A border that looks like a highway. Cartel scouts operating on American soil. MS-13 chapters in every major city. Really great diplomacy there, fellas.

Trump looked at all of that and said what every normal American has been screaming for twenty years: these are terrorists, and we should treat them like terrorists. The same people who cheered when we drone-struck ISIS leaders in Syria suddenly got very concerned about “escalation” and “precedent” when it came to the organizations killing more Americans than Al-Qaeda ever did.

Funny how that works. A terrorist in the Middle East? Hellfire missile, no questions asked. A terrorist in Mexico who’s killed fifty times more Americans? Oh no, we couldn’t possibly, think of the diplomatic implications.

Well, the diplomatic implications just got a whole lot simpler. You traffic drugs that kill Americans, you’re a terrorist. Terrorists get the military. The military just demonstrated what that looks like in the Eastern Pacific.

And here’s the beautiful thing — this isn’t a one-off. This is the new normal. The designation means military assets, military intelligence, military rules of engagement. The cartels went from being a “law enforcement problem” to being on the same target list as the people who flew planes into buildings. That’s not a rhetorical distinction. That’s the difference between asking Mexico’s permission and asking the Navy to go hunting.

The left will scream about it. They always do. They’ll say it’s militarism. They’ll say it’s an overreach. They’ll bring up some international law professor from Georgetown who’ll explain why actually this is very problematic. And while they’re doing that, another cartel submarine won’t be reaching our shores.

We spent twenty years and trillions of dollars fighting terrorism on the other side of the world. The whole time, there was a terrorist army operating on our border killing our citizens at industrial scale. It took Trump to state the obvious and act on it.

So raise a glass to the men and women who just put some narco-terrorists at the bottom of the Pacific. They earned it. And to all the pundits who said this day would never come — maybe sit this news cycle out.