On October 23, the Trump administration announced to Congress that it is planning “land attacks” within Venezuelan territory. Such attacks, of course, would be acts of war, and there are no plans for Congress to declare war on any foreign state.
Moreover, on Tuesday, Trump declared that any country deemed by the administration to be making drugs for US markets is a possible target for US military attack. Trump also stated that military strikes on Venezuela territory would “start very soon.”
Meanwhile, the administration has been using the US military to engage in extrajudicial killings of persons in the Caribbean alleged to be “narco-terrorists.” The administration admits it doesn’t actually know who these people are. The US military is simply killing people without any evidence of actual crimes or of a military threat. Nor has the administration attempted to offer any evidence. The justification for the killings is simply—to use a phrase from meme culture—”trust me, bro.”
The attacks are also clearly meant to serve as a provocation and a threat to the Venezuelan regime, and to serve as an “example” of what will be done on Venezuelan territory if the current Venezuelan president does not go into exile as demanded by Trump.
So much for the president who, while a candidate, claimed he would oppose any new wars and end existing ones.
Instead, what we have now is a president who advocates for a new war in South America—in addition to his proxy wars in Palestine and Ukraine—and has no intention of adhering to any sort of rule of law in doing so.
So, this is yet another case of “here we go again.” Every few years, no matter who is president, the US regime—i.e., the “foreign policy blob”—comes up with yet another country that we’re told requires “regime change.” And, as with all drives to war, the result is more runaway federal spending, more disregard for the rule of law, and more unmitigated power for the American executive state.
Forget about the US Constitution
By now it’s very quaint to protest the American warfare state by suggesting that presidents actually adhere to the US constitution. No president has taken the US constitution seriously in decades, and Congress has done precious little oppose them.
Nonetheless, whatever opposition can be mustered to the untrammeled bellicosity of US presidents is a good thing. This week, a handful of members of Congress introduced legislation prohibiting Trump from launching “hostilities within or against Venezuela” without congressional approval.
Only a very small handful of Republicans have spoken out against the president on the administration’s accelerating threats and on the killings of unidentified supposed “narco-terrorists” in boats outside US territory. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Massie of Kentucky supports the war-powers legislation. Senator Rand Paul, meanwhile, has condemned the killings of passengers and operators on “drug” boats. And rightly so, as Judge Napolitano noted this week, one of the most recent “drug-boat” attacks clearly violated international law when the US disabled one boat, and then, rather than arrest the survivors simply killed them. Napolitano correctly described this as a war crime.
Of course, even if Congress does pass legislation reining in the President’s power to commit acts of war against Venezuela, it’s unclear the legislation would have any effect. The US regime is far beyond accepting any legal limits on warmaking imposed by the US constitution which is clearly defunct except in the minds of those clinging to a romantic fantasy about the nature of modern American politics.
A Threat to Actual Americans?
It’s a given that the rule of law will be ignored in this conflict, just as it has been ignored for many decades. But an important political question is this: does the Venezuelan regime pose any threat to actual Americans?
With questions like these, the burden of proof is always on those who want a new war and are demanding tax dollars to do it. So where is the evidence of a Venezuelan threat? If there were one posed by the actual regime, we’d be sure to hear about it, since it would greatly help the warmongers. But, it seems the best the administration can do is deem the Venezuelan regime as a “terrorist” organization. But here they don’t even make the case for any real terrorism like a normal person would associate with terrorism, such as the bombing of buildings. No, the administration has been clinging to the idea that Venezuela is sponsoring “narco terrorism.” This is term of extremely flexible meaning, and could include anything from cartel activity to the mere selling of drugs within the United States.
(The party of “personal responsibility” now tells us that drug use Among Americans is not the fault of the Americans who buy and use drugs. No, apparently the guilty party is the one who simply brings the drugs to market.)
In any case, all of this is a very long way from “weapons of mass destruction” or “dirty bombs” or even anthrax in your mail—the sort of things that is associated with actual terrorism.
No, the “terrorism” requiring a US bombing campaign against Venezuela is apparently some people on small boats that the regime swears—cross my heart and hope to die—are totally “drug boats.”
In the end, the “narco-terrorism” angle is simply political cover for helping carry out the longtime plans of neoconservatives who have dreamed for many years of installing a US puppet in Venezuela.
Trump’s neoconservative bona fides are now firmly in place, after all. This is a president who vehemently supports Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most committed warmongering neoconservatives in Congress. The administration also has resurrected the career of Elliott Abrams who was appointed during the first Trump term as a “Special Representative” for both Iran and Venezuela. Abrams—a die-hard Zionist, of course—has been working for many years for regime change in Venezuela, and Trump may be the one to get it for him. Abram’s most recent column at Foreign Affairs shows he isn’t giving up.
Headed Toward another Regime Change “Success”?
It’s always difficult to guess any politician’s true intentions, and this is certainly true of Trump. Regime change, in any case, remains one of the worst options going forward. After all, what success has the US had with remine change in recent decades? The US spent twenty years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. After years of allying with terrorists in Syria to effect regime change, al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists are the new dictators of Syria. In Iraq, the country’s ancient Christian community was decimated in the wake of the US invasion. The standard of living there utterly collapsed, and the Iraqi regime is now far more friendly toward Iran that it was under Saddam Hussein. Libya is now a hotbed for terrorism with slave markets and a ruined economy. These are the American regime’s “success” stories.
What horrors await the people of Venezuela if the US carries out regime change there? I hope we don’t find out.
Nonetheless, perennial calls for regime change somewhere are now standard operating procedure in Washington, with or without Trump in the White House. Every minute of every day, the American empire is dreaming up new wars and new excuses for new wars. Trump clearly has no problem with playing along so long as it helps him spend more money on key constituents, especially his Zionist funders and the corporate welfare queens at organizations like Raytheon.
Some “MAGA” supporters have expressed disappointment in the administration’s refusal to do much to change course on this. But, as Tom Mullen recently noted:
Part of the problem is that Trump’s anti-war platform was never as radical as the true American First crowd would like to believe. He talks a good game about ending “forever wars,” but he doesn’t question the core of the empire—the global standing army, the 800-plus bases warehousing hundreds of thousands of troops overseas, and the non-defensive use of them, as long as the war isn’t a “forever war.”
Indeed, Trump’s posture reminds one of Madeleine Albright’s famous complaint to Colin Powell during the Clinton Years: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
An empire with a huge offensive military is likely to use it. And Donald Trump clearly likes the idea.
