President Trump authorizes CIA action in Venezuela and may authorize air strikes.

 

President Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel. New York Post/AP.

President Trump has authorized CIA action in Venezuela and may also authorize air strikes. New York Post. Trump has launched airstrikes at drug smuggler boats in the ocean but has not targeted any strikes into Venezuela itself. He said the action was justified due to Venezuela's actions pertaining to illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Trump did not confirm if President Maduro was a target, saying it would be "stupid to answer that" but said that Venezuela is going to face increasing pressure. A flight of B-52's was deployed to the area as an intimidation tactic. 

My Comment:

It's crazy to me that news articles about this issue do not mention Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan former prison gang turned narco-terrorist group. These are the true target of these attacks, both at land and at sea, and it's very strange that they don't get mentioned in any of the articles I have read about this topic. 

I think Trump's explanation of why he's doing this is valid. Tren de Aragua have been pretty terrible in their actions. Everyone remembers the apartment complex in Colorado where they took over and blackmailed the residents there. They are highly involved in drug smuggling and sending illegal immigrants to the United States. 

And the Maduro government? They have close ties to them. They profit from the drug deals that these groups do and they helped facilitate the illegal immigration of these groups into the United States. That does justify these strikes and any further actions in my mind. There is no justification for a government trying to smuggle people into a country so they can more easily smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants into the country. 

The one question I do have is why Tren de Aragua instead of the Mexican Drug Cartels? The Cartels are a much larger threat then Tren de Aragua and they just put bounties on our ICE agents. I understand that politically it would be very hard to justify the same kind of actions against the Cartels, given that Mexico is a partner, if not an ally, But I would prefer we deal with the bigger threat. 

I do fear that this could lead to an attempt at regime change against the Maduro government. I am no fan of course, but I do think that doing so could end the same way every single other time we have tried to do so in the past 25 years or so. I can't think of a single time where it really worked out, with the possible exception of Iraq, but it took decades of bloody warfare for that to happen. 

Still, it's not like the Maduro government deserves to be in power. The fact that they are socialist alone should disqualify them from keeping power, but the fact that they won't even allow folks to vote them out is a big problem. If that was it, it wouldn't really be our problem, but they also send us drugs and immigrants and we shouldn't have to tolerate that. 

I will say that would be the difference between this conflict, which I kind of support, and the conflict with Russian in Ukraine, which I absolutely did not. Russia doesn't do the kinds of things to us that Venezuela does. They are sending us drugs or gang members to extort people and commit crimes. They aren't being particularly nice to Ukraine, but that's not our problem. 

Finally, I do have to say that escalating the fight against the drug cartels does go counter to Trump's desire to be seen as a peace keeper. To be fair, he's ended a half dozen wars, so he absolutely should get credit for that, but starting a new war, even though he's got a valid casus belli, is going to go cross purpose to getting his Nobel Peace Prize.