Tag: venezuela

The Trump administration has developed a series of options for launching attacks on Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, as the US continues its military buildup in the region.

The report said that one option would involve bombing Venezuelan military facilities with the goal of collapsing military support for Maduro in hopes that it would get the Venezuelan leader to flee. But critics of the approach argue that it would likely have the opposite effect, rallying the military around its embattled leader.

The second option would be to send special operations forces, such as Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force, into Venezuela to kill or capture Maduro. Such an operation would put the US troops involved in the attack at serious risk since Maduro has the support of his military and a civilian militia that the Venezuelan government says has millions of members.

The third option would involve sending a much larger force into Venezuela to capture airfields and some of Venezuela’s infrastructure and oil fields. The Washington Examiner has reported that US military planners believe the forces in the region are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory.

The Times report said that President Trump is reluctant to back an operation that would put US troops at risk or come with the chance of failure, and for that reason, other plans are being developed that would involve naval drones and long-range weapons. A decision isn’t expected until the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, which just left the Mediterranean, arrives near Venezuela.

If Trump orders an attack on Venezuela, it would almost certainly lead to a full-blown war or a quick decapitation of the government, which would likely plunge the country into chaos. The Times report cited Trump aides who said far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

Trump aides said that the president has expressed reservations about attacking Venezuela and that he’s asking what the US could get out of it, with a focus on Venezuela’s vast oil resources. The push to launch a war in Venezuela is being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor.

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“A top Justice Department lawyer,” the Washington Post reports, “has told lawmakers that the Trump administration can continue its lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America — and is not bound by a decades-old law requiring Congress to give approval for ongoing hostilities.”

That law is the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of commencing military hostilities, and to cease those operations within 60 days unless Congress authorizes their continuation.

The first admitted US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean occurred on September 4; under the War Powers Resolution those strikes (which have killed dozens) would necessarily end on November 4 unless Congress says “sure, keep on going.”

But it’s more complicated than that, and not just because White House Office of Legal Counsel chief T. Elliot Gaiser claims the War Powers Resolution only applies when US troops are “in harm’s way,” and that the drone strikes  in question pose no such danger.

The big issue with the War Powers Resolution is that it’s unconstitutional. Not for the reason most administrations claim — that it limits an imagined presidential power to wage war at will and on whim — but in the other direction.

The US Constitution assigns the power to declare war exclusively to Congress. Not after the president has done whatever he wants for 60 days, but from the very beginning. Aside from immediate defense against direct attack, a president waging war prior to or outside of a congressional declaration is an impeachable “high crime.”

Some argue that the passage of time and advancement of technology imply a necessary expansion of presidential war powers: He must be able to act in the moment and not wait around on a dawdling Congress. It’s actually the other way around.

In 1941, it took 29 hours and 30 minutes from the first explosions at Pearl Harbor for Congress to declare war on Japan. That was before members of Congress could hop on planes to return to Washington — or, for that matter, boot up their laptops for Zoom meetings.

Since Congress has used remote and proxy technology before (during COVID), the infrastructure is already there for Congress to act quickly if its members believe a war is called for. Absent something on the level of a nuclear holocaust, the president could receive full war authority within single-digit hours.

But let’s take Gaiser at his word for a moment: If the drone strike campaign in the Caribbean isn’t war, what is it?

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The US has bombed another alleged drug-running boat in the waters of Latin America, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Saturday.

Hegseth said the vessel was targeted in the Caribbean and, as usual, he provided no evidence to back up his claims about what the boat was carrying. He said the bombing killed three “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration is using to justify extra-judicial executions at sea for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.

The attack brings the total number of boats the US has bombed since September 2 to 16, and the total number of people killed in the campaign to 64, according to numbers released by the Trump administration. Nine boats have been hit in the Caribbean, and seven were targeted in the Eastern Pacific.

While the Trump administration has claimed the boats that have been targeted were attempting to bring drugs to the US, a US official has told Drop Site News that many of the vessels that have been struck “do not even have the requisite gasoline or motor capacity to reach US waters.”

Trump officials have also framed the bombing campaign as a response to fentanyl-related deaths in the US, but the US official speaking to Drop Site also noted that little to no of the fentanyl in the US comes from Venezuela, where most of the boats targeted in the Caribbean have come from.

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The Miami Herald reports that the president has decided to order attacks inside Venezuela:

The Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment, sources with knowledge of the situation told the Miami Herald, as the U.S. prepares to initiate the next stage of its campaign against the Soles drug cartel.

An attack on Venezuela is completely unjustified and illegal. The president has no authority to start a war with Venezuela. An American attack will be a flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter and international law. The U.S. will be committing criminal aggression against a neighbor on the dubious pretext of combating drug trafficking, but we all know the real goal is to attempt forcible regime change.

No one can be surprised by this news. We know that the administration has been preparing for an attack for months. There were already signs of a new illegal war on the horizon in August when the president ordered the military to use force against cartels. The subsequent military buildup in the Caribbean and the ensuing murder spree at sea confirmed that the U.S. was getting ready to strike. The deployment of the USS Gerald Ford to the region was further confirmation that they intended to escalate with attacks inside other countries.

The administration will probably restrict its intervention to a bombing campaign, but that is hardly good news. If the murder spree at sea is any indication of what to expect, attacks inside Venezuela will kill many civilians on purpose. Given Hegseth’s enthusiasm for “lethality” and war crimes, we should assume that the rules of engagement will be extremely loose. The coming war with Venezuela will likely get a lot of innocent Venezuelans killed.

The administration may hope that intervention will lead to a coup against Maduro, but that seems like a long shot. Venezuelan military leaders have had several opportunities to ditch Maduro before, and they have not done so. Maduro might try to ride out the bombing campaign. It is possible that he could even try turning the attack to his advantage if most Venezuelans respond to the attack on their country as people normally do by rallying behind their government.

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If you’ve been sniffing around the MSM today (or social media), you’ve probably seen headlines implying we’re poised for military action inside Venezuela to take out Nicolás Maduro and his regime. That’s because outlets like the Miami Herald are reporting that “the Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment” and “will seek to destroy military installations used by the drug-trafficking organization the U.S. says is headed by Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and run by top members of his regime.”

The Herald also reports that an anonymous source said, “Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to. What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.” 

Some call it “advanced planning,” while others report that this action could take place within days or even hours. Some still seem to think that this means a full-on invasion. Even old Bernie Sanders is on X fussing about Trump “declaring war.”  

Let’s calm down and take a deep breath here. First of all, as I’m literally typing this, Donald Trump is on Air Force Once talking to reporters, and he denied that he’s made a decision about any type of military action on Venezuelan soil. The White House has also told us that when/if it happens, they will let us know. It won’t be some reporter with a “source close to the situation.” 

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