In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II,” a character named Dick the Butcher tells a confederate, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” There’s long been debate over the meaning of the line, but the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a 1985 opinion that he interpreted it to mean that “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”
This came to mind while watching White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speak at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference on Thursday, in which he had quite a bit to say to a group of Latin American military leaders.
At the heart of Miller’s pitch was the idea that it was necessary to combat drug cartels, not through law enforcement techniques or border control, but rather by using deadly military force.
“[What] we have learned after decades of effort is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem,” he said. “There are elements of the problem that require a criminal justice solution, to be sure, but just as we fought al-Qaida and fought ISIS with the tip of a very lethal sphere, the reason why this is a conference with military leadership, and not a conference of lawyers, is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.
“And I see some heads nodding up front because they understand you’re dealing with a lot of lawyers in your own country, I’m sure. You have my permission not to listen to them.”
Dick the Butcher would be proud.
The comments came roughly two months after the controversial White House aide told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the U.S. is entitled to acquire Greenland, arguing: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
As 2026 got underway, The New York Times reported that Miller is an enthusiastic advocate of “a strongman’s view of the world.” The report added that, according to Miller, “using brute force is not only on the table, but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.”
Two months later, as Miller advises Latin American military leaders to disregard their lawyers’ guidance and Miller’s boss wages an unnecessary war in Iran, the relevance of that sentence lingers.
