During The Past Few Weeks, The Trump Administration Has Engaged In An Illegal And Immoral War Against Venezuela. The War Violates Both United States Law And International Law And The Principles Of A Just War.
Wars almost always bring atrocities with them, and unfortunately, Trump’s war on Venezuela is no exception. According to an account published by the Washington Post on November 28th, “As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors. The longer the American surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers.”
People were aghast at this barbarous display, and in response, the Trump Administration put out a transparently lame excuse. It tried to shift the blame to the admiral in charge of the operation. “President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would not have wanted a second strike on the boat and said Hegseth denied giving such an order. But White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that Hegseth had authorized Admiral Frank Bradley to conduct the strikes on September 2nd. ‘Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,’ Leavitt said. Leavitt said the strike was conducted in ‘self defense’ to protect American interests, took place in international waters and was in line with the law of armed conflict. ‘This administration has designated these narco- terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations,’ Leavitt said. Starting in September, the U.S. military has carried out at least 19 strikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coasts of Latin America, killing at least 76 people.”
Trump’s alleged “concern” for so-called “narco-terrorism” is hypocritical. Trump pardoned a former president of Honduras who was serving a long prison term for bringing an enormous amount of cocaine into America. Somehow, that doesn’t qualify as “narco-terrorism.” Trump’s South America policy is getting more ridiculous by the day. As ‘Moon of Alabama’ reports, “Yesterday he announced a pardon for the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for partnering with drug traffickers who had allegedly shipped 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. He also endorsed a right-wing candidate Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura for Sunday’s election in Honduras. Asfura belongs to the same party as Hernández.”
It transpires that Venezuela is not a major supplier of drugs to America, despite all the hoopla from Trump. As Finian Cunningham reports, “Venezuela’s role in narcotics trafficking to the United States is not significant compared with other Latin American countries, according to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime. Colombia and Peru are more important as cocaine sources. The American Drug Enforcement Administration has denoted Mexico as the biggest source of illicit fentanyl, which is responsible for most American overdose deaths.
It was said earlier that Trump’s war on “narco-terrorism” violates international law, and Cunningham offers a succinct summary of the relevant points: “The United Nations Charter explicitly outlaws every aspect of Trump’s conduct towards Venezuela. Article 2:3 mandates that all disputes must be settled through peaceful means. Article 2:4 prohibits the use or threat of military force.”
You should know that Trump’s policy violates American law. As law professor Michael Ramsey notes, “The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 specifically lists as a power of Congress the power ‘to declare War,’ which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities. . . Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war.”
Now, let’s look at what is the most important thing we need to consider in assessing Trump’s aggressive and illegal war: Murray Rothbard’s account of just war. Here is what he says: “Much of ‘classical international law’ theory, developed by the Catholic Scholastics, notably the 16th-century Spanish Scholastics such as Vitoria and Suarez, and then the Dutch Protestant Scholastic Grotius and by 18th- and 19th-century jurists, was an explanation of the criteria for a just war. For war, as a grave act of killing, needs to be justified. A reasonable view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people try to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.
In sum, what Murray is saying is that a just war must be defensive; a nation must be trying to stop an invasion. And even in a defensive war, you must follow certain restraints. You cannot attack non-combatants. Shipping narcotics to America is not waging war, however much we might oppose attempts to do this.
Moreover, blowing up people who are clinging to a boat so that they won’t drown is cowardly and dastardly. Only those utterly without a conscience could do such a thing. Let’s do everything we can to oppose Trump’s unjust war against Venezuela!
Hidden History -- In The Making 