It was a propaganda stunt. As with all other members of Trump’s administration that’s the most important part of his job.
Meanwhile, Trump’s getting his splendid little war. According to the Atlantic:
[Yesterday]the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group, a multi-ship force staffed by as many as 5,000 troops, would travel from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. The intent, the Pentagon said, is to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors.” The ships, which are currently on a port visit in Croatia, will take just over a week; their movement was the latest indication that what began as a campaign to pick off alleged drug runners as they ply the seas in small fishing vessels is evolving into something far larger.
The U.S. hasn’t sent this many ships to the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis. There are already roughly 6,500 Marines and sailors in the region, operating from eight Navy vessels, as well as 3,500 troops nearby. Once the Ford arrives, the U.S. will have roughly as many ships in the Caribbean as it used to defend Israel from Iranian missile strikes this summer. The carrier strike group also provides far more firepower than is necessary for the occasional attack on narco-trafficking targets. But the ships could be ideal for launching a steady stream of air strikes inside Venezuela.
“The only thing you could use the carrier for is attacking targets ashore, because they are not going to be as effective at targeting small boats at sea,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired Navy officer, told us. “If you are striking inside Venezuela, the carrier is an efficient way to do it due to the lack of basing in the region.”
Of course they’re going to strike Venezuela. True, Marco would have liked it if Maduro had just crawled away with his tail between his legs and turned the country over to the Chalabi-esque exiles Rubio would like to replace him with but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So war it is. Trump needs to revive his flaccid manhood after all that peace talk (which really isn’t his style) and the others all have their presidential ambitions and xenophobia to feed.
And they’re just going to do it without going to congress. Trump said,they might talk to them at some point but they don’t need a declaration of war they’re just “going to kill them, they’ll be, like, dead.” So that’s that.
I’ve written about all this stuff a lot over the past few weeks as we’ve seen this escalation. It’s inevitable. But the consensus is that they will not have boots on the ground:
All of the military experts we consulted agree that the United States doesn’t appear to be preparing for a boots-on-the-ground invasion like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More likely, they said, the administration is gearing up for a “push the button, watch things explode” operation, like the strikes against nuclear facilities in Iran in June. Among the potential targets being considered is infrastructure used by suspected narcotics traffickers, officials familiar with the administration’s thinking told us.
But such a campaign would not be without peril for the troops carrying it out. Since the strikes began, Venezuela also has already flown F-16s over American destroyers operating in the region. During any attack in Venezuelan air space, U.S. pilots would likely come up against Maduro’s air defenses. Analysts differ over how much of Venezuela’s air defense is fully functional and maintained, but they are in consensus that its military has a network of anti-aircraft batteries, multiple air-defense units armed with cannons, and numerous portable air-defense systems. The military also has a sophisticated long-range-missile system capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, according to Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.
Ramsey warned that even if the strikes lead to defections and eventually the fall of the regime, multiple pro-government armed groups in the country could challenge a new government and contribute to a bloody outcome that would look something like Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Qaddafi.
“I think ultimately, what you need is a way to channel the enormous pressure that Maduro is under towards a peaceful, democratic outcome,” Ramsey told us. “And I think you can get there without firing Tomahawk missiles into the country.”
During the Arab Spring, Trump had initially said that he supported U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya. But as instability followed, he shifted his position. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said that Libya would have been better off if Qaddafi had stayed in power.
“I was never for strong intervention,” Trump said that year. “It’s a total mess.”
If you thought those missions were a mess, get ready. We have Orange Julius Caesar and Whiskey Pete running this one. And they both love to see things go boom.