Donald Trump's Venezuela campaign will be disastrous

[marmar]

Donald Trump’s Venezuela campaign will be disastrous
Trump is the latest president to meddle in Latin America — and the outcome will be no different

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published October 21, 2025 9:20AM (EDT)


(Salon) Since Sept. 1, the United States has been blowing up boats in the Caribbean Sea and killing people on board with apparent impunity. The current death toll stands at 32. According to President Donald Trump, the dead — and those the Navy continues to target — are Venezuelan “unlawful combatants” and “narco-terrorist” members of the Tren de Aragua gang and are alleged to be transporting drugs bound for America. This amounts to war on drug cartels, Trump has said, allowing the U.S. to act in self-defense.

As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has written, this “phony war” is indicative of the twisted pathology of Trump’s worldview. Reporting over the last week has made it clear: The danger of this situation going sideways becomes greater every day. And considering America’s history in the region, such an outcome almost seems pre-ordained.

....(snip)....

The president, though, does not seem to feel any moral obligation — or pressure — to produce any evidence, and over the weekend he inadvertently revealed the vacuity of the administration’s arguments. “It was my greatest honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” he said in a social media post. While two were killed, Trump announced that the “two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”

....(snip)....

But the apparent template for Trump’s obsession with Venezuela was America’s invasion of Panama in 1989, which removed dictator Manual Noriega from power. According to official numbers, 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed in the invasion. Local tallies, though, placed the number “close to 1,000. Noriega was eventually arrested and brought to the U.S., where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. Since Noriega was actually a CIA asset, one might have thought the government could have removed him from power without all the fireworks. He was released to France in 2010. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/10/21/donald-trumps-venezuela-campaign-will-be-disastrous/

[gab13by13]

1. Disagree, everything is going according to the dictator's plan

Krasnov ordered the military to kill 32 people, and it obeyed him.

The practice used to be that the Coast Guard would shoot out the motor to disable the boat and then board it.

Now, dear leader, tells the military who to kill.