Our military and intelligence communities as political cannon fodder

December 1, 2025

Andy Caldwell

OPINION by ANDY CALDWELL

You must have heard about the six U.S. senators who stated that the threats to our Constitution are emanating from the Trump administration and therefore both the military and intelligence community should refuse so-called “illegal orders.” Specifically, they stated, “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens… We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.”

These senators are, of course, being too clever by half. By stating that “threats are emanating,” they certainly sought to imply that Trump is already issuing illegal orders.

We know what they are hoping to do. They are hoping that neither the military nor the CIA will follow through on bombing narco-terrorist boats in the Caribbean, and that troops will no longer accept deployment to major U.S. cities to protect federal installations under attack by protestors who are attacking ICE and Border Patrol agents, up to and including, attempted murder.

There is a silence here that is beyond deafening. In what way, shape, or form have any of these senators, let alone the entire Democratic Party, shown any concern whatsoever about the narco-war being waged against the citizens of the United States?

Over 105,000 people die from drug overdoses in a year. Moreover, 76% of those deaths are from opioids, mostly related to fentanyl, and drug overdoses have killed over 1.25 million people since 1999. The vast majority of these drugs are being illegally imported into the United States primarily by way of land and sea. Over one million dead Americans and counting and the “constitutional crisis” is Trump trying to shut off the supply of the same?

We all know about the dems effort to close the border to not only illicit drugs, but also the narco-terrorists, Islamic terrorists, the Mexican drug cartels, the Chinese Triad, and others. Their effort was zero, zilch, nada!

In fact, Biden did the opposite. Instead of using the Border Patrol to stop the invasion of some 12 plus million people into this country illegally, he took the Border Patrol personnel off their patrols to help them process the illegals coming into our country.

Now that Trump is trying to round up the worst of the worst, including those with final orders to deport, those with a criminal record, and those who trafficked minors, the dems are urging a revolution against his orders?

To try and undermine our president, who is also our commander-in-chief, is extremely dangerous. In essence, these senators are asking our troops and intelligence community to make a judgement as to what is an illegal order because they can’t turn to our courts any longer for nationwide injunctions.

Nationwide injunctions are court orders that prevent the federal government from implementing a policy or law that has a cascading effect impacting the entire country, not just the parties involved in the court case.

America’s strength against losing our Constitution lies in the brilliance of our founding fathers to separate the balance of powers among the three branches of our government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.

Because the Democratic Party won’t accept the fact that Trump has won two elections, and because they have lost control of the House, they have turned to lawfare to stop Trump at all costs. That is, they have sought to manipulate, obfuscate, and delay Trump’s ability to govern by using the judicial branch to bludgeon democracy.

Trump’s first administration faced more than half of all nationwide injunctions in the last six decades, 64 injunctions out of the total 127 nationwide injunctions issued since 1963. Thankfully, the Supreme Court delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch.

So, now that the dems have lost their ability to handcuff Trump by way of the House and our courts, they are turning to the members of our armed services and the intelligence community to block Trump’s mandate to govern.

In essence, they want the very agencies that directly report to Trump to accomplish their political agenda because they don’t have a majority in Congress and they have been rebuked by the Supreme Court as it involves nationwide injunctions. And they say Trump is the threat to our Constitution?

In essence, these senators and the members of their own party who will not censure them, are hoping to foment nothing short of a defacto mutiny to stop Trump. These senators have, at a minimum, violated their oath of office, and worse, they are guilty of sedition.

They need to pay a price before America finds itself in the middle of an outright civil war. Their actions are part of a pattern to upend the Trump administration by hook and crook for the umpteenth time, dangerously so.

Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB in Santa Barbara County and host of The Andy Caldwell Radio Show, weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on  FM 98.5, FM 99.5, AM 1240, AM 1290 and FM 96.9.

 


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Bots are getting more and more believable.


Jeez, even the usual MAGA nuts aren’t coming to blithering Andy’s defense in this one.


Dems trying to break our military. Come up with some good ideas for the country. Or will it be 3 more years of “Trump bad”. Doesn’t help me a bit.


No one is trying to break the military. When you have a draft dodging commander in chief who appoints a Fox News host to run the most powerful military in the world you should be worried.


And it is sad, that past military members feel the need to remind current military members to adhere to their oath. But look at who is president…


What illegal orders are the military following? No courts cases. No charges. No complaints.


Finding yourself surrounded by people that support blatant murder? Come on over to side of facts and reason; we wont berate you or threaten your life; tho your former constituents probably will. Vote blue!


Associating the Plantation Party with “facts and reason” is some kind of oxymoron, I think. Why must you always act as the apologists and enablers for drug dealers, terrorists, human slavers (traffickers in woke vernacular), drug smugglers, drug pushers, and all other manner of pathological criminal conduct??? After 50 years of half-hearted or failed counter-drug efforts, we finally have a federal administration that has decided to wage a REAL war on drugs. We finally have a president that recognizes Columbia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba and China are waging de facto wars against the USA and then responds accordingly with resolve and action. Are you upset that the inflow of cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S. has been reduced by 25% in the past two months? Are your personal pharmaceutical recreation expenses going up? Damned inflation!!! Trump’s fault, right? Looking forward to more of the same. Let’s push the price of illicit drugs into the stratosphere.


So pardoning a convicted drug smuggler who was president of Honduras is helping how? Law and order right?


It is not helping. President Trump is occasionally almost as confused, confounding, and nonsensical as President Bribem. Occasionally, almost. Drug Kingpins and other corrupt major players in drug pipelines should be removed from society with lifetime imprisonment or other means of separation.


LOL! When Andy riles up the usual CCN suspects this much, we know he’s right.


Well said Andy. When I saw the so-called Senator from Michigan, Senator Slotkin, being interviewed. She was asked “Have you seen any illegal orders from Trump?” “Well no” was the response. She’s a fraud, all 6 of those clowns are frauds.


Frauds really?


So which one is it regarding those “ cigarette” boats?


A war crime for killing survivors of a military strike or murder for killing citizens of another country in international waters?

And who told them to do it?


So, Andy, you support war crimes? What a joke you are. There’s this pesky little thing called due process, you blathering idiot.


Venezuelan, Mexican, and Columbian drug cartels and illegitimate narco-states lost their right to due process when they engaged in de facto warfare against the United States, and when the U.S. State Department classified those entities as International Terrorist Organizations. America voted for a new president and he’s no longer playing by Queensberry Rules. This is what a REAL War on Drugs looks like. This is what Americans voted for. We lose more Americans to drug overdose deaths & drug-related accidents in one year than the United States military lost during the entirety of the Vietnam War. Stop being an apologist for drug cartels and Narco States.


Please show me the law regarding losing the right to due process. The whole idea of due process and habeas corpus is that you have to show evidence of somebody committing a crime before imposing a sentence. There is NO evidence that those boats were being operated by a drug cartel. Maybe they were, but the point is that you have to demonstrate the evidence first. You don’t get to shoot and ask questions later. By your logic, the military could just determine on its own that you are a Venezuelan drug smuggler and blow up your house and shoot you in the head without ever having to offer any proof. Do you not see how dangerous that is???


There is plenty of irrefutable evidence that the Cartels are operating vessels targeted by our Navy. The legislation that permits President Trump to bomb designated foreign terrorists piloting drug-laden fast boats and semi-submersibles, is the 2001 AUMF (Authorizations for Use of Military Force). This is the same authority President Obama used in 2016 to drop 26,000 bombs across Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.


Also, according to Admiral K.E. Lundsay, the acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, of all the vessels interdicted between Sept. 2024 and October 2025 off the coast of Venezuela due to suspicions of illegal activity, only 21% were actually doing so. That means 79% were not. So under your current “Department of War Crimes”, they are just straight up murdering 4 people for every 1 drug smuggler at the same time that bloated Cheetoh is pardoning the man actually responsible for bringing in over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.–a man unanimously convicted by a jury made up of ordinary citizens despite the senile grifter’s entirely fabricated excuse that it was just a Biden frame-job. Your entire arguments is bullshit–just like this entire administration.


“The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan


Our attacks on the boats are a violation of international law. Even Republicans are coming forward to challenge Hegseth on this.


Totally legal and justified. The recent classification by the U.S. State Department of Venezuelan and Columbian Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Congressional AUMF (Authorizations for Use of Military Force) in 2001, and Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the President authority to blast those drug-laden fast boats and semi-submersible, along with their crews, to smithereens. Stop your pearl clutching and hand-wringing over the loss of tons of cocaine and a few cartel criminals. Why do you liberals have so much angst over the interruption of illicit drugs into North America but none for the millions of citizens destroyed by those same illicit drugs? Stop your irrational and immoral wailing, apologizing, and enabling of the illicit drug trade. Everyone can see your policies enable the death, despair, sorrow, pain, suffering, murder, corruption and destruction of society and innocents. You aren’t fooling anyone; your hands are dripping with blood.


All that blather~ and not one whiff of proof that there was even a gram of drugs on any of these boats that were blown out of the water. Come with facts or shut your pie hole.


Right! Just some wealthy Venezuelans out for a little cruise in the cigarette speed boats! That’s so normal man!


Right, Sherlock! Low profile, high aspect hull, fast boats with three or four 200 hp outboard engines hanging on the transom. No cabin on deck. The others are ultra-low profile, snorkel-breathing semi-submersibles (not real submarines) painted to match the color of the ocean. All moving North from Venezuela and Columbia in the Pacific or Caribbean. Those aren’t fishing boats, and they aren’t out for an afternoon of water skiing. Exactly the same sort of boats and displaying the exact same behavior (periodic zig-zag headings to avoid detection) that drug smuggling fast boats and semi-submersible exhibited when previously interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy over the past 10+ years. Prove me wrong or shut your piehole.


I think you are just pissed that all that cocaine and fentanyl is going to waste in the ocean after being blasted to smithereens and now your blow costs more.


Considering drunk driving kills thousands of people in the US, maybe random airstrikes on vehicles would solve the issue?

Fast moving, erratic drivers would be eliminated thus saving thousands of lives. No proof needed or evidence needed. The argument could be made that they might have been drunk and were a danger to society.


Your logic and arguments are bizarre and absurd. You want to equivocate drug smugglers carrying lethal drugs north from Venezuela and Columbia with American citizens operating vehicles on our roadways? No serious person would draw an such an equivalence. Citizens have rights and are entitled to due process. Besides, there already exists an entire law enforcement framework for dealing with DUI. Narco terrorists and cartel scum are not entitled to the same; they are enemy combatants engaged in de facto warfare.


Would you also like to argue your case as an apologist for the same cartel operations of evil slave traders who smuggle their victims into the United States for exploitation as cheap labor and enslaved sex workers? Monsters engaged in modern day slave trading deserve to be promptly exterminated when caught in the act. What sort of absurd hallucinated equivalence do you want to suggest for slave traders? I meant that simply in the rhetorical sense, no one really wants you to respond with another twisted irrational answer.


No proof has been given that the people killed in the boat strikes carried drugs. So my comparison to drunk driving is definitely absurd. So is killing people in international waters without evidence.

So is it murder for killing people in international waters or a war crime for killing wounded enemy combatants?


Hard to tell who were on those boats. Drug runners, people forced to participate or sex workers because they were killed without any sort due process. Enemy combatants because Trump says So? Please. You are gullible.


Not only are you certainly clueless, you also are not privy to the intelligence sources (humans on the ground, drones, aircraft and satellites) available to the military, CIA, U.S. State Department, and the president. They know where the fast boats and semi-submersibles are originating, what cargo they carry, and who/how many crew operate the craft. The intelligence is verified & validated by multiple officers in both the military and Intelligence service hierarchies. Confirmation and authorization for use of force is initiated in each case in accordance with long established engagement protocols. The only thing they don’t do with the intelligence information is share it with you or the media. Neither of you are in the loop and you have no need to see it.


Cool story.

Pass that along to pentagon Barbie so he knows not to share war plans on social media. Also, wake up Don to let him know we are not in a declared war with anyone.

So if helgeth gave the order to kill everyone and that was followed through it is a crime.

And my guess we will hear more stories of illegal actions by hegseth and illegal actions followed by military personnel.


Wanna bet?