Every doubt about U.S. aims, every trace of the Big Lie about a “drug war” was erased when the Pentagon’s top Secretary Pete Hegseth proclaimed Oct. 24 that the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier group is being sent to the Caribbean Sea. You don’t need Darth Vader’s Death Star to stop speedboats. The U.S. target is Venezuela’s popular government and all the people of the Western Hemisphere south of the U.S.
Even the corporate media had to admit that the Trump-Hegseth-Marco Rubio moves in the Caribbean have no relation to keeping fentanyl out of the United States. That battle should have started with the pharmaceutical monopolies regarding oxycontin.
The eight U.S. warships already in the region have blasted ten small boats and murdered over 40 crew members. The boats themselves would need dozens of refuelings to even reach U.S. coasts. Now the USS Gerald Ford group with 35 warplanes will arrive, doubling the number of planes deployed to air bases in U.S.-ruled Puerto Rico, and with a total of more than 15,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and pilots primed for battle.
All imperialist leaders lie. It’s part of their job. But it’s worse with Trump, who has never had even the most flimsy connection with truth. He’s allergic to reality. Especially if the truth hurts his narrow material interests.
Trump is ordering the U.S. Armed Forces to change Venezuela’s government. If they wage aggressive war, Trump, Hegseth, Secretary of State Rubio, the Navy commanders — all are ordering the military to commit war crimes. Those who disagree resign in time, as the top Navy commander in the Caribbean did, for undisclosed reasons.
The rank-and-file troops on those ships should be warned that they are following illegal orders and any aid to the war effort makes them complicit. They have the right, even the duty, to refuse these illegal orders.
How will this U.S. escalation unfold, with what timetable and for what duration? How many Venezuelans will the Pentagon war machine target? Will the Trump-Hegseth-Rubio cabal risk an actual invasion with land forces to occupy Venezuela with a “forever war”?
That’s what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Venezuela, a larger country in area than either, is home to 30 million people. Some 4.5 million adults were officially enlisted in popular militias in August, and people report that millions more have volunteered after the U.S. began its war threats. The militias are now holding coordinated training exercises with the regular armed forces.
Volunteer fighters from Brazil and other Latin American countries have already declared their intention to form international brigades to help the Venezuelans drive out any U.S. forces in order to defend the sovereignty of the hemisphere from U.S. recolonization.
What can we in the anti-imperialist movement in the U.S. do? We must find a way first to show solidarity with the people of Bolivarian Venezuela, then to throw a wrench into the U.S. war machine. The first step is to mobilize united protests against U.S. intervention. The next is to organize these forces to find every way possible to impede the attack — before it starts, if possible — and to assure its failure if the Trump cabal carries it out.
The massive demonstrations showing revulsion to the overall Trump grab for power show the potential for mobilizing real resistance. And the challenge. The movement here in the United States is fighting on many fronts: defending migrants against ICE, stopping arms to Israel, stopping the cutbacks for workers, stopping attacks on the Black community, fighting the call for martial law — that’s a partial list.
The latest events show that the movement must give another demand priority: Stop the war on Venezuela!