TRUMP’S BOGUS “WAR” AGAINST VENEZUELA – AMERICA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Dr. Common Good
This morning’s attack on the Venezuelan capital and the abduction of President Maduro and his wife (for trial in the US) is a complete, appalling abrogation of both international law and of US law. Dr. Common Good repudiates this in the strongest of terms. Let me be straight with you. Regardless of what one might otherwise think of Maduro and his authoritarian rule, any American who thinks this attack is either justified or represents some proud assertion of American dominance is either wildly misinformed or does not think of the United States as a democratic country that stands for the rule of law. We have no right to do this, any more than some other country has a right to invade and abduct our president because they don’t like him — sorry, but you cannot do one without accepting the validity of the other. Nor do we have a right to simply claim that we will take a country’s oil or “run” the country.
And how does Trump justify this? Because, he says, Maduro is a drug dealer (a “narco-terrorist”) and thus a threat to the US, and that he has “emptied out his prisons” and sent criminals our way. There is, I repeat, no evidence to back this up, and in previous repetitions of this allegation the Trump administration has provided no evidence either. Evidence aside, for Trump to declare such concern about drug traffickers is pathetic gaslighting. Trump just recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, an actual, convicted mass exporter of drugs to the US. How does he justify this, after attacking Venezuela and abducting its president? He says that Hernández “was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump…This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly.” A disgraceful whine from someone who purportedly represents this country.
What the US just did should shame all Americans, Democrat, Republican, Independent, or anything else. On top of that, Trump’s attack violated the UN Charter, specifically Article 2(4), which holds that countries must refrain from using military force against other countries and must respect their sovereignty. Trump’s attack also violated US law, specifically the War Powers Act. As Senator Chris Coons (Delaware) put it, “a military operation to capture and overthrow a president – even an illegitimate one – is an act of war that must be authorized by Congress.” And in willful disregard of Congress’ role, the Trump administration plainly lied in previous Congressional briefings in which they asserted that regime change in Venezuela was not a goal.
Who, then, is stopping Trump and his cronies from this wide-ranging thuggism? Where is Congress? Where is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State? Or more accurately, what happened to Mr. Rubio that he acceded to this travesty? Where, I ask, is the red line?