Trump's strikes on coke boats are missing the root of the problem

Every few weeks, another video circulates from the Caribbean: a plume of smoke over turquoise water, a small boat breaking apart under U.S. fire.

Washington now bombs narco-vessels — eight of them, as of this writing — claiming decisive victories in a televised war on drugs. Yet every detonation hides a deeper failure. The cocaine economy that sustains Colombia’s armed networks, and increasingly President Gustavo Petro’s political machine, does not live at sea. It thrives inland, across guerrilla encampments and jungle laboratories that function as ministries of production.

Until the U.S. redirects its effort from boats to the camps and corridors that feed them, it will keep winning headlines while losing the war — and paying for it at home in the form of rising American overdoses.

Petr