PM gifted pen, gets special mention from US President

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics in Flori­da for the Shied of the Amer­i­c­as

In a his­toric mo­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go has joined a new­ly es­tab­lished mil­i­tary al­liance led by Unit­ed States (US) Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump known as the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion.

This agree­ment was rat­i­fied fol­low­ing Trump’s sign­ing of the Do­ral Char­ter at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da.

It came dur­ing a meet­ing where this coun­try’s Prime Min­is­ter was sin­gled out for spe­cial men­tion by the US Pres­i­dent, who held her hands as the two met be­fore the sum­mit be­gan. He lat­er gift­ed her the pen he used to sign the agree­ment.

Ad­dress­ing the hand­picked in­vi­tees at the Sum­mit, Pres­i­dent Trump said, “The heart of our agree­ment is a com­mit­ment to us­ing lethal mil­i­tary force to de­stroy the sin­is­ter car­tels and ter­ror­ist net­works once and for all. We’ll get rid of them. We need your help.”

He added, “You have to just tell us where they are. We have amaz­ing weapon­ry, as you prob­a­bly no­ticed over the last short pe­ri­od of time.”

Crit­ics have ar­gued the “shoot first” pol­i­cy vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law by re­plac­ing due process with ex­tra­ju­di­cial mar­itime killings, spark­ing fears of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty and re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty. Le­gal schol­ars fur­ther con­tend it over­steps ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty by treat­ing a law en­force­ment is­sue as an unau­tho­rised mil­i­tary con­flict.

“We’re knock­ing the hell out of them where we can. We’re go­ing to go heav­ier,” Trump de­clared.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the White House, this agree­ment and coali­tion mean that, “The Unit­ed States will train and mo­bilise part­ner na­tion mil­i­taries to achieve the most ef­fec­tive fight­ing force nec­es­sary to dis­man­tle car­tels and their abil­i­ty to ex­port vi­o­lence and pur­sue in­tel­li­gence through or­gan­ised in­tim­i­da­tion.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who stood to the right of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dur­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, was pre­sent­ed with the pen used to sign the agree­ment by the US Pres­i­dent him­self. Dur­ing that part of the cer­e­mo­ny, the Wash­ing­ton Post March, a world-fa­mous US mil­i­tary com­po­si­tion, was played.

The sym­bol­ic ges­ture ap­peared to de­light the Trinidad and To­ba­go leader, who has re­mained stead­fast in her sup­port for the ex­pand­ing Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean and the re­gion’s joint cam­paign against drug car­tels.

Pres­i­dent Trump told the var­i­ous na­tions’ lead­ers in at­ten­dance, “I saw it so bad­ly, how you’re suf­fer­ing with what’s hap­pen­ing with the crime in the re­gion. And I said, if we ever come back, we’re go­ing to erad­i­cate that crime, and I’m go­ing to work with you, and if you want, we’re go­ing to do it, we can do it pret­ty eas­i­ly.”

The oth­er coun­tries present were Guyana, Paraguay, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Pana­ma, Hon­duras, El Savador, Ecuador, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Chile, Bo­livia and Ar­genti­na. The White House, how­ev­er, con­firmed that 17 na­tions will be part of the coali­tion.

Trump said, “The na­tions gath­ered here to­day are filled with un­lim­it­ed po­ten­tial. You have tremen­dous po­ten­tial. It’s a great, a great part of the world. But to ful­fil that tremen­dous po­ten­tial, we must smash the grip of the car­tels and crim­i­nal gangs and hor­ri­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions run by, in some cas­es, ab­solute an­i­mals, and tru­ly lib­er­ate our peo­ple. And some peo­ple are afraid to do it, be­cause it’s so, they’ve got­ten such a foothold. But I think you can get out of that, and we’ll work with you if you need.”

Pres­i­dent Trump claimed that drugs com­ing through mar­itime tran­ship­ment points are down “96 per cent.”

“We’re try­ing to find out who the oth­er 4 per cent are, be­cause I think they’re the bravest peo­ple in the world.”

Mean­while, US War Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth said, “We look for­ward to work­ing with all of your coun­tries and more that are not here to say, with our shared as­sets and our in­tel­li­gence and our ca­pa­bil­i­ties, with Amer­i­can lead­er­ship, we will go on of­fence against the car­tels. They will know that we’re just around the cor­ner. Whether it’s drug boats or on land, we look, the Amer­i­ca’s Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion, the AC­CC, will be a force for good, for peace through strength in this hemi­sphere.”

And Pres­i­dent Trump told the sum­mit that the US is strength­en­ing its mil­i­tary ar­se­nal with 10 new bat­tle­ships be­ing con­struct­ed.

“Not to use them, we don’t want to use them, but by hav­ing them, no­body’s go­ing to play games. Just good to have them, we don’t want to use them.”

Com­ment­ing briefly on Cu­ba, Pres­i­dent Trump said, “Cu­ba’s in its last mo­ments of life, as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last mo­ments of life, the way it is. These sit­u­a­tions in Venezuela and Cu­ba should make clear un­der our new doc­trine, and it is a doc­trine, that we will not al­low hos­tile for­eign in­flu­ence to gain a foothold in this hemi­sphere. That in­cludes the Pana­ma Canal, which we talked about. We’re not go­ing to al­low it. And to­geth­er, we’ll pro­tect our sov­er­eign­ty, our se­cu­ri­ty, and our cher­ished free­dom and in­de­pen­dence.”

Chi­na is one of the “for­eign in­flu­ences” the US Pres­i­dent re­ferred to.

Dur­ing his speech, there was a light mo­ment shared be­tween Pres­i­dent Trump and Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar as it per­tained to the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of her name and its sim­i­lar­i­ty in spelling to his for­mer De­mo­c­ra­t­ic op­po­nent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the US, Ka­mala Har­ris.

While try­ing to pro­nounce Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first name, Trump said, “I have to be very care­ful with this be­cause, you know, your word, your first name is very sim­i­lar to a first name that we have. But for­tu­nate­ly, it’s pro­nounced dif­fer­ent.”

He added, “But I had to be care­ful with that first name.”

The US Pres­i­dent added, “This is Kam­la as op­posed to Ka­mala. I like Kam­la bet­ter, in many ways. And I have to say thank you very much, but I have to be care­ful with that first name. I don’t want to get it mixed up be­cause it would ru­in your rep­u­ta­tion com­plete­ly.”

Dur­ing the of­fi­cial “fam­i­ly pho­to” with the in­vit­ed heads of state and gov­ern­ment and Pres­i­dent Trump, Sinead O’Con­nor’s song “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” was played, a track that was fre­quent­ly used dur­ing Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.