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It seems like we read it twice a week.
“Four dead in US airstrike,” “Venezuelan ship brought down by US fire,” “Two dead as Trump strikes down another ship,”
So many breaking headlines we become immune to the words “airstrike” and “Venezuela”.
The reality? These words become life-and-death decisions for fishermen in Venezuelan waters. A reality impossible to forget.
Donald Trump has ordered 20 individual bombings in the last three months and has killed more than 80 people since September. Trump claims every last one of those people was “dangerous narco-terrorists” who are threatening America. In reality, there is little to no evidence implicating the majority of the victims in organized crime.
Three months of terror
The US began initiating airstrikes on Venezuelan ships in the Caribbean Sea in September, under the guise of fighting narco-terrorism.
Donald Trump, backed by Pete Hegseth, outlined his mission to battle maritime drug trafficking in Latin America after the first strike.
That first strike came on September 2, when an American military vessel sank a 39-foot speedboat filled with “a considerable amount of cargo.” This initial strike was one of the more legitimate, with the vessel hailing from a known trafficking centre, and multiple sources supporting the US's accusations of it being a criminal vessel. 11 people were killed in the first strike, according to Trump, all of them members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
Over the next six weeks, Trump carried out another four strikes, killing 16. There were drugs recovered in only one of the strikes. Venezuela has claimed that at least one of the boats attacked was a fishing vessel.
Additionally, at least two of the victims have been confirmed as Colombian citizens without any attachment to the country of Venezuela, nor its organized crime groups.
These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,
-Pete Hegseth
What next?
Donald Trump was reportedly briefed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Thursday regarding possible avenues of furthering military actions in Venezuela.
According to ABC, possible actions could range from nothing to air strikes on seaports, airports and military facilities. According to experts, Trump was also briefed on a dramatic (if less likely) option: sending in a team of special operations forces to apprehend or kill Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and his senior advisers. This, of course, would be an overt act of war that experts say even Trump would be hesitant to commit to.
Pete Hegseth has made it clear that the US feels no inclination to stop its advances against Venezuela.
“The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are—they will be hunted, and killed, just like Al Qaeda – Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,”
The legality of either option mused by Trump is foggy, with some lawmakers claiming the US could legally force Maduro out of office, and others saying that the US has no right to be conducting any foreign military operations in Venezuela.
The US recently deployed the USS Gerald Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier, just north of the Caribbean Sea. Along with the carrier, there are now 15,000 American troops in Latin America, and 60 aircraft, including F-18 fighter jets.
Are they legal?
Experts are split on whether these attacks are lawful or not. On the one hand, Donald Trump is not technically breaking American law. As president, he is designated “Commander in Chief” of the army, meaning he has the power to order attacks against military targets.
Even if Trump isn't violating National law, he's certainly breaking international law.
Prof Luke Moffett of Queen's University Belfast, a human rights expert, claims that the attacks must be “reasonable and necessary in self-defence where there is immediate threat of serious injury or loss of life to enforcement officials,” to count as self-defense. He claims the attacks are “unlawful under the law of the sea,” as the vessels were in international waters and posed no immediate violent threat to the US.
Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin, another human rights expert, says that the US is “stretching the meaning of the term [self-defense] beyond it's breaking point,” and that “Labelling everyone a terrorist does not make them a lawful target and enables states to side-step international law.”
Whether Trump is directly violating international law is irrelevant (we'll direct your attention to international crimes committed in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, all gone unenforced by the UN). What is relevant is the fact that innocent people are being killed. It's been confirmed that at least three of the vessels sunk were ships being used by drug cartels, but at least three of them were not.
After three months of strikes ramping up exponentially, Venezuelan fishing boats live in constant fear of American attacks, and now that the strikes are happening to Colombian vessels and near Mexican shores, America is striking fear in fishermen all over the Caribbean Sea.
