Attacking the hornet’s nest that is Venezuela

General James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense, was reportedly fond of reminding President Trump that the enemy gets a vote in every action. He didn’t coin the saying, but it is a long-standing rule of thumb in strategic military planning. While you may strike first, what the enemy elects to do in return is up to them. The repercussions are often far harsher than what politicians face in the polls.

This divide between the general and the politician he used to serve has grown more stark in recent weeks as American warships amass near the coast of Venezuela, a nation most Americans would be hard-pressed to spell, let alone find on a map.

While the president delights in kicking the hornet’s nest that is Venezuelan politics, American soldiers know — personally — the suffering that will ensue if we continue to ignore our Ukrainian allies but start a war in South American jungles.

Last week, the president’s aggression in the Caribbean was bolstered by the USS Gerald R. Ford, our country’s most “capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world, maintaining the Navy’s capacity to project power on a global scale through sustained operations at sea,” as posted by the Navy.

Operation Southern Spear now involves almost a dozen Navy ships and nearly 12,000 soldiers, reported Reuters, rounding off “the largest buildup of U.S. firepower in the region in generations.”

Yet the president’s insistence that this is a move to fight drugs has little basis in reality. As the DEA reported in 2019, less than 10% of cocaine coming to the U.S. originated in Venezuela, whereas nearly 75% traveled through corridors in the Pacific Ocean.

In May, a DEA report stated, “Fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, are the primary drivers of fatal drug overdose deaths nationwide,” and caused more deaths than all other categories of drugs.

Given the operating cost of a vessel like the USS Ford is upwards of $6 million a day, we are sliding into a humbling reality in which American cocaine users could cost the nation billions in our next war, while our air traffic controllers have yet to be fully repaid for their weeks of free labor during the government shutdown.

Could it be that the president’s sudden obsession with Venezuela has nothing to do with his pot shots at unconfirmed “drug” boats in the Caribbean and instead with Venezuelan politics? And, frankly, have we any business meddling in a foreign government’s hornet nest when our own house is in such a shambles?

We have seen deep cuts enacted or proposed against our beloved National Park Service, the Office of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, Public Broadcasting Service, National Endowment for the Arts, the Food and Drug Administration, The National Weather Service, The Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office, and the Smithsonian.

These cuts have gutted the best parts of our nation’s soul while the latest federal budget is still projected to increase the nation’s debt by trillions. Working class families are facing an astronomical rise in health insurance premiums, fuel costs, and groceries. They have had to go without SNAP benefits for weeks. They should not have to give up their sons and daughters in uniform to Trump’s new war as well.

Nor will a war against their dictator, Nicolás Maduro, be easily won. International news agency Reuters noted in a November 11th article that, “Venezuela is deploying weapons, including decades-old Russian-made equipment, and is planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a U.S. air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by Reuters.”

One might argue that local mobs of ill-equipped soldiers are hardly a match for our military, but such wishful thinking did little to win the Vietnam War. Further, criminology professor and author José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, an expert on organized crime in Venezuela, told reporters, “The mere fact that the US is acting and threatening Venezuela has stirred nationalist feeling among Venezuelans in the face of a foreign invader – and Maduro plays that very well.”

Consider the sabers rattled, even if they are rusty.

An American president who casually dismisses our troops as losers and suckers has no right to then gamble those soldiers’ lives in a foreign country that poses no real security risk to our nation. A leader who has fought harder to avoid military service than to honor our nation’s military at Arlington has no business adding to the cemetary’s numbers to sate his drive for distraction.

The lives of American soldiers are worth more, far more, than whatever gold and oil are luring Trump to the streets of Caracas.

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