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On Saturday morning military operatives of the U.S. government invaded Venezuela, engaged in lethal combat with the military there, and kidnapped the sitting president, Nicholas Maduro. Mr. Maduro was removed to New York City, where he was put in prison awaiting criminal charges under U.S. law for drug dealing. While U.S. President Donald Trump has declared that the purpose of this operation was to make the US safe from narco-terrorists, he added that only after touting that the US was seizing Venezuela's oil industry. Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world. Yes, Trump literally said the quiet part out loud: he did it to take their oil.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. Over?
There are so many things that are wrong with this situation. I'll try to compile a short list:
1. The US attacked a sovereign country in an act of undeclared war.
2. The US president engaged in an act of war against a sovereign country, without Congress declaring war and without even the thinnest evidence of there being exigent circumstances to protect US citizens. (It's a lesson I remember being repeated weekly in US Government class in the 7th grade: Only Congress May Declare War.)
3. Rather than fight a war by the modern rules of warfare, targeting the enemy's military and factors of military production, we went straight for removing their commander in chief.
4. President Trump has cited "The Donroe Doctrine", making a pun on the name of the Monroe Doctrine, an infamous policy statement from 1823 that asserted the US has the right to engage at will, militarily, to achieve its desired outcomes in other countries in the western hemisphere, but no other country in the world has such a right.
5. The argument that Trump had to act swiftly and unilaterally in the name of national security because Maduro is allegedly involved in drug trade is belied by Trump's lack of coherent policy on punishing drug kingpins, especially foreign-leader-drug-kingpins. Just last month he pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence "for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses" according to the Justice Department. He was "at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world," helping to bring more than 400 tons of cocaine, according to the Justice Department. Trump claimed the pardon was because the administration of former president Joe Biden "treated [Hernandez] very unfairly" while of course providing absolutely zero evidence of any unfair treatment.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. Over?
There are so many things that are wrong with this situation. I'll try to compile a short list:
1. The US attacked a sovereign country in an act of undeclared war.
2. The US president engaged in an act of war against a sovereign country, without Congress declaring war and without even the thinnest evidence of there being exigent circumstances to protect US citizens. (It's a lesson I remember being repeated weekly in US Government class in the 7th grade: Only Congress May Declare War.)
3. Rather than fight a war by the modern rules of warfare, targeting the enemy's military and factors of military production, we went straight for removing their commander in chief.
4. President Trump has cited "The Donroe Doctrine", making a pun on the name of the Monroe Doctrine, an infamous policy statement from 1823 that asserted the US has the right to engage at will, militarily, to achieve its desired outcomes in other countries in the western hemisphere, but no other country in the world has such a right.
5. The argument that Trump had to act swiftly and unilaterally in the name of national security because Maduro is allegedly involved in drug trade is belied by Trump's lack of coherent policy on punishing drug kingpins, especially foreign-leader-drug-kingpins. Just last month he pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence "for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses" according to the Justice Department. He was "at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world," helping to bring more than 400 tons of cocaine, according to the Justice Department. Trump claimed the pardon was because the administration of former president Joe Biden "treated [Hernandez] very unfairly" while of course providing absolutely zero evidence of any unfair treatment.
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