President Donald J. Trump has been waging war against the American people, but meanwhile, another war has been brewing too, one with Venezuela.
Guess We’re At War With Venezuela Now?
Seriously, what is up with this? Pumpin’ push-up Pete Hegseth has now ordered Special Operations forces to blow up a total of six boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela (that we know of, so far), based on Trump’s claim that they were full of gang members planning to smuggle drugs into the US. And Trump just blurted out that the US has been doing covert CIA operations down there, after the New York Times revealed that Trump had secretly sent notice to Congress two weeks ago declaring the US is officially at war with Venezuela now. But guess they aren’t covert operations or a secret war any more!
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s response: “Can anyone believe the CIA hasn’t been operating in Venezuela for the past 60 years?” He does have a point.
And though Trump spilled the beans about “covert operations,” Senator Tim Kaine says that the administration still refuses to brief the Senate about any of them, or anything to do with Venezuela at all, and the goings-on have been “a black hole.”
And on Wednesday, Trump surprised everybody by announcing he was thinking about putting boots on the ground, too.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”
Weeps in Ukrainian.
And now the US has been flying B-52 bombers and helicopters off of the coast, and has more than 10,000 forces in the region, including 300 on the ground in Puerto Rico.
Did Trump say NO NEW WARS? You misheard, he said NO! NEW WARS!
But why? Trump’s claims sure are nonsensical and falling apart more every day, about how these are some drug boats, and Venezuela is the real aggressor, somehow.
The boats are too small to be able to make it more than a thousand miles to the US. Footage of the boats speeding across the water before getting vaporized seems to show they aren’t loaded down with anything at all. What happens in international waters is not the US’s business. And if the boats are full of drugs, wouldn’t it make more sense to say, hang out in the Gulf of America and intercept them as they enter US waters, instead of committing war crimes against random people? If only we had some kind of guard for the national coastline! Or, one could intercept the boat to make sure there really are drugs, and then try and find out where the drugs are coming from and going to, if one wanted to actually try to put a stop to their coming and going.
And as it turns out, some of the victims are not even Venezuelan. Two were from Trinidad and Tobago, one was Chad Joseph, a 26-year-old who had been living in Venezuela and had just told his family that he was taking a boat trip home to visit, and never arrived. Another was confirmed by the Colombian government as a Colombian citizen. And one of the men’s wives says he was just a simple fisherman. Did it never occur to the administration that these people might have families who miss them and could debunk the “drug lord” claims? Now the sixth boat attack, which Trump says was a “submarine” that was “loaded up” with drugs, has an unknown number of survivors, which the US has taken into custody. Can’t wait to see the evidence and hear what they have to say. Literally can’t, because it will be a miracle if we ever hear from those people again.
And the drug-smuggling thing is also a lie, of course. Venezuela is a transit point for cocaine, that is true, it is next door to Colombia. But about 90 percent of US-bound cocaine enters the country via Mexico, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration itself. And Venezuela is not a significant source of fentanyl, which is mostly produced in Mexico with Chinese chemicals. And the penalty for drug dealing in the US is not death.
Also a lie, the Venezuela “emptying prisons in America” line Trump loves so much, which he entirely invented and has been debunked many times. And, sigh, the gang thing. The US’s own assessment of the Tren de Aragua gang is as “loosely organized cells of localized individual criminal networks” that was so “decentralized” that it would be difficult for it to coordinate actions, and that it is not controlled by Venezuelan President Maduro.
How hinky is this not-so-secret secret new war? Between the fifth and sixth boat attacks, US Admiral Alvin Holsey retired — two years before the scheduled end of his tour of duty. He was overseer of operations in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean as head of the US military’s Southern Command, has 37 years of experience, and the New York Times says he got pushed out after reportedly clashing with Pete Hegseth about the legality of the strikes. Of which there is none.
But this administration doesn’t give a shit about any stinking war crimes!
Save that one for somebody’s future starring role at The Hague, featuring the overplayed smash hit Gosh, I was just joking! Since when is humor a crime?!
Even Republican senators are not thrilled about a new forever war. Well, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, anyway. Paul signed on with Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine to force a vote on legislation that would bar the United States from engaging in hostilities inside Venezuela without explicit authorization by Congress. Kaine says Congress is still waiting to hear for a justification for the boat strikes, and you’d think senators would bristle at such disrespect. But last week, Kaine and Schiff forced a Senate vote to limit Trump’s war powers in the Caribbean and that vote failed 48-51, with only Paul and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining in support.
So, guess everybody else is just going to pretend it isn’t an entirely made-up hallucination that drug cartels have been attacking American forces, and that the justification for war isn’t just thin, but entirely nonexistent.
Why does Trump really want to take over Venezuela? Why did he want to take over Canada? Or Greenland? Who knows. John Bolton claimed that Trump wanting the maracas of Caracas was some Monroe Doctrine-style grabbiness, with Trump claiming in his first term that Venezuela was “really part of the United States.” And Trump was disappointed when a coup attempt in 2019 failed to get Maduro out. So, unfinished business?
And then there’s the same reason colonialists have always had for colonizing, all of those sweet natural resources! The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs going all the way back to an 1895 boundary dispute between Venezuela and Britain. And since then, the US government has helped install and prop up the worst dictators, and subvert any democratic movements that might threaten their control. The US even trained Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas. Norteamericanos sure do love some cheap gas!
Old-fashioned imperialist greed would sure seem to be the obvious answer. Blood for oil! BUT! Maduro has now reportedly promised Trump all of Venezuela’s riches, including opening up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, giving preferential contracts to American businesses, sending Venezuelan oil to the United States instead of China, and tearing up his country’s existing energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian, and Russian firms. What more could Trump want? Yet Trump was not interested, rebuffed him, withdrew all diplomacy, and then Boozehole went and blew up another boat. A fine howdy-do!
So, guess Trump does want regime change, for whatever reason. And most Venezuelans did not vote for Maduro, he lost the last election but clung to power anyway, and his approval rating is at 18 percent. So maybe Trump will get his wish of an all-new Venezuelan dictatorship with a custom-installed puppet of his own! Or we will get another forever war with lots of dead American soldiers and Venezuelan civilians, because Pete Hegseth couldn’t command taking over a keg at a freshman dorm, and everybody he works with hates him.
Place your bets!
[New York Times gift link / NPR / Brookings]
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