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The United States Navy is conducting a full-scale search-and-destroy campaign against alleged drug smugglers in the waters off Latin America and posting the results on Twitter.
The strikes have been going on for almost two months now and have killed over 50 people if Wikipedia is to be believed. I had no idea this was even an option. It turns out that You Can Just Do Things™.
I think that these are all probably smugglers of some kind. I have seen speculation that the some of the crew counts are higher than one would expect for drug running, which could imply human trafficking (consensual or otherwise) as well. If any of these boats were conducting legitimate business I suspect we would have had receipts by now.
The legal justification, to the extent that anyone cares about that anymore, seems to be that:
Drug cartels are terrorist organizations.
These boats contained cartel members targeting the United States (with drugs).
Therefore, these boats contained terrorists targeting the United States (with drugs).
This seems kinda flimsy, but again, does anyone actually care? Democrats are backed into a corner here. They will probably lose if they attempt to litigate whether or not these boats were actually smuggling drugs, but the other strategy would be to condemn the strikes under the legal technicality that they weren’t authorized by congress, even though the boats were smuggling drugs. This makes them look like exactly the kind of out-or touch institutionalists that voters hate.
It's just a flimsy excuse for regime change cooked up by Neocon Rubio, who has been regularly sabotaging Trump's foreign policy for the deepstate. American's are getting killed by fent and meth, almost all of which comes from Mexican cartels and Chinese precursors. They are mad about this and want someone to stop it. So here comes Rubio to... park 20% of the US navy off the coast of Venezuela which acts as a smuggling hub for a small fraction of cocaine that enters the US (more goes through there to Europe). Cocaine is a drug and it can kill but its more of a posh party drug, it's a white house party drug. It's not something that is killing the poor on the street.
It's all very obvious, this is why they blow up the ships coming for Venezuela instead of recovering them and they don't bother prosecuting the surviving crew and just repatriate them. Otherwise we'd find out there is no fentanyl. The globalists are just taking advantage of populist anger and Trump's naivete to continue their unprovoked wars of imperial aggression. Venezuela will get new leadership courtesy of the tax payer's dime and its oil will go to Rubio's globalist friends.
How does blowing up a few tiny boats near venezuela contribute to regime change. The venezuelan people as well as the venezuelan normies couldn't care less
I don’t think this alone will do it but the only way to topple the bolivarian regime is to deject and destroy the morale of the millions of indigenous peasants who prevented previous coup attempts and who form the loyal core of Maduro’s support. With the military co-opted fully after 25 years of socialism, the right lack the manpower to mount an effective revolutionary attempt; those with money have fled and the remaining and even former middle classes have the most to lose from another failed attempt to topple him. The US will never invade Venezuela, it’s hardly Granada and would likely hit the casualty level (~2000 US troops) where public sentiment can quickly turn, but if it can humiliate the military, and humiliate the regime, it probably makes the end marginally more likely.
How???? Maybe in the case of an insurgency or occupation they can pick off a bunch of troops, but I don't see how Venezuela can break the double digits in kills in a conventional conflict with the US.
Because the loyal natives who benefited most from socialism will riot and the army is relatively loyal (and they don’t need to be fully loyal, just loyal enough for some to rebel and hand over the weapons and ammunition stores), the chance of a prolonged leftist insurgency in the country’s difficult terrain is significant. A FARC type campaign (and various other Latin American leftist groups, cartels and likely low key foreign governments hostile to the US would gladly fund it) would be very costly in terms of lives even if an initial invasion was fast, there would be bombings and terror campaigns targeting occupying soldiers, the whole thing would turn into a quagmire.
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