The United States has killed 90 people this year in “extrajudicial executions” – state-sponsored murders – largely targeting people on alleged smuggling boats from Venezuela.
Now Donald Trump has an American aircraft carrier group steaming through the Caribbean, threatening an invasion – based on lies.
The US justification for killing suspected drug smugglers is that they’re flooding America with deadly fentanyl.
Aside from the obvious legal issues; such as not firing warning shots at the smugglers, not arresting them (as has been the norm) and forever cutting the victims out of any due process of law, America’s justification for the killings is nonsense.
According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in the US, and every other relevant source of information on the scourge of fentanyl in America, NONE of the deadly opiate comes from, or via, Venezuela.
It gets to the US from Mexico – the precursor chemicals to make it come from China.
Mexicans aren’t being bombed. There’s no threat to invade Beijing.
In this new rogue order – that Trump did not invent but is amplifying – international law and ethics mean nothing. It is might that makes right in Trump’s book, and invasion, a form of real estate acquisition by other means.
He has notably hosted Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin on American soil and ignored international arrest warrants for the men who have both been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Putin claimed to be invading Ukraine to save its Russian population from Kyiv’s Nazi dominance. That was a lie and now vast numbers of Ukraine’s Russian speakers are refugees, or dead, killed by Russia.
But Trump has acknowledged that he believes Russia has a “right” to Ukrainian territory because so many Russians have died fighting for it.
Trump has also enthusiastically suggested that Gaza should be emptied of Palestinians and turned into a seaside resort. Lately he’s reported to be backing a plan to turn it into a colony under Tony Blair.
These are terrible ideas and illegal under international law which forbids the forced displacement of populations.
No matter.
Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t like the regime of Nicolas Maduro, who has ruled the oil-rich country since 2013.
Maduro is a dictator and stole the July election last year from opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez who later fled to exile in Spain.
The securocrats who support him have been allowed to run sidelines in smuggling drugs and gold. The rotten system may extend all the way to the top – amid US sanctions and international isolation.
Trump likes strongmen who disregard democratic norms. Victor Orban, Putin, and China’s Xi Jinping are the men he appears to most admire or consider peers. They are authoritarian capitalists. Maduro’s sin may be his claim to be a “socialist”.
The Venezuelan leader says he believes Trump wants to depose him. The White House says this isn’t true.
But there is no immediately obvious reason why Trump would be killing small teams of Venezuelans on motorboats and sending a fleet to intimidate Caracas – except regime change.
The White House has justified its killings of alleged drug smugglers and fishermen from Venezuela, because the US is in a “non-international conflict” with “narco-terrorists” who are killing Americans with drugs.
The UN says the killings are “extrajudicial executions” – and Amnesty International agrees. The UK and Colombia have reportedly suspended intelligence sharing in the Caribbean over the targeting of the alleged smuggler boats.
But now Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has said Cartel de los Soles, a group the US alleges is led by Maduro, will be designated a terrorist organisation.
Al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State, Hamas, the Real Irish Republican Army and others have all been designated terror groups. So have several Mexican drug cartels.
But in designating Venezuela’s president as being at the helm of a narco-terrorist organisation, the head of state is now firmly in America’s cross-hairs.
There has been consternation in the top echelons of the US military over the killings in the Caribbean. Admiral Alvin Holsey, the US commander in the region, is to step down next month – two years early.
It is understood he raised legal and ethical objections to the use of the Pentagon’s assets in killing civilians under a doctrine usually reserved for attacks on armed operators posing an immediate violent danger to America or her citizens.
In a statement to The Independent, a Justice Department spokesperson said: “The strikes were ordered consistent with the laws of armed conflict, and as such are lawful orders.
“Military personnel are legally obligated to follow lawful orders and, as such, are not subject to prosecution for following lawful orders.”
The crews of some 75 US aircraft, 5,000 troops, spies, and special forces are now gearing up as they approach Venezuela.
They’d better hope they’ve got good lawyers.
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