Venezuela offers a perfect example of why Trump’s policies must be judged separately from Trump’s words. Here’s my analysis from RealClearPolitics.
By FRANK MIELE
The precision strike against Venezuela that led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on criminal charges was without a doubt one of the high points of U.S. military history.
And there should be no doubt that the success of the operation redounds to the credit of President Donald J. Trump. No other president in recent memory would have had the guts or imagination to authorize the operation, but Trump has a history of using the military in a surgical manner to take out our enemies (in the case of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Quds Force) or to neutralize global threats (in the case of last year’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities).
Despite the criticism on the right that such operations are not “America First,” there is no doubt that eliminating our adversaries’ threat potential is indeed putting America First. In a world grown increasingly dangerous, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for our enemies to strike at us before responding.
Fortunately, there has been little meaningful opposition to Trump’s campaign to rid Venezuela of its home-grown narco-terrorist. Yes, Democratic senators took to the airwaves to decry what they considered to be the use of brute force by the U.S. military against a sovereign nation. But who do they think they are kidding? Venezuela was a rogue nation for 30 years, led by oligarchs and treating its own citizens like dirt.
As long ago as 2018, the Cato Institute called the collapse of legitimate government in Venezuela “the biggest humanitarian crisis you have never heard of,” with millions of people fleeing the failed socialist state. Even if the U.S. didn’t have a reason to bring down Maduro for his involvement in drug trafficking, we have a valid stake in stopping the influx of illegal migrants from Venezuela by re-establishing order in their homeland.
And Venezuelans understand that too. Almost two-thirds of Venezuelans living abroad support the U.S. military intervention. Fewer make the same claim in Venezuela proper, but for good reason. They have been living in fear of the Maduro regime for years, and U.S. action left many of the same dangerous socialist thugs in power.
In short, Trump saw a problem and cleaned it up.
So don’t even think about criticizing Trump for using military force. And don’t trot out the congressional power to declare war as an excuse to paint this as illegal use of force. The United States is not at war with Venezuela, and does not want to be at war, so the antique process of declaring war is irrelevant.
But criticism of Trump is not limited to his policies. There is also the matter of the president’s uncanny ability to put his foot in his mouth – a trait which makes no sense for a guy who spent the majority of his life as a salesman.
I am talking in particular about the morning-after press conference which saw Trump selling the takeover surrounded by his secretary of state, secretary of war, and the chairman of the joint chiefs.
In that setting, Trump said, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
Anyone with a degree in marketing could have told Trump that most Americans don’t want to run Venezuela, or any other country, especially in light of the disastrous results of trying to impose a free government in Iraq following the U.S. invasion. So by Trump declaring that “we’re going to run the country,” he opened the door to criticism that this was going to be yet another nation-building venture in the failed models of Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
Trump’s initial words on the topic were actually quite anodyne, but in a world built on sound bites, they gave Democrats and legacy media the opening they needed to sow doubt about the future of our mission in Venezuela. Indeed the first four questions asked of Trump during his day-after press conference all sought clarity on what running Venezuela meant. Unfortunately clarity was in short supply. At one point, Trump even waved at the Cabinet secretaries and military leaders standing on the stage with him and said, “The people that are standing right behind me, we’re going to be running it.”
Despite the president’s good intentions, it was the wrong thing to say.
Fortunately, Secretary of State Rubio was one of the people on stage and over the next 24 hours, he was able to refocus the discussion. Quietly and vigorously, he transformed the president’s message about “running” Venezuela to a much more nuanced take on “leverage.”
No, the United States did not have ambitions for running Venezuela from afar, or installing some weak democratic government that would be at risk of military coup. Instead, Rubio explained, the United States had enough leverage from controlling the export of oil to ensure that whoever took charge of the nation would do the right thing. In fact, over the next two days, Rubio used the word “leverage” multiple times to explain that the United States would use economic pressure to persuade Venezuelans to course-correct without further military action on the mainland.
He told Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “What you’re seeing right now is an oil quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next.”
On ABC’s “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos asked Rubio “under what legal authority” would the U.S. be running Venezuela. But Rubio didn’t take the bait. This wasn’t an issue of legal authority, but an issue of power wielded on behalf of a beleaguered people:
First of all, what’s going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met. And that’s what we intend to do. So, that leverage remains. That leverage is ongoing. And we expect that it’s going to lead to results here.
On “Meet the Press” with Kristin Welker, Rubio questioned “people fixating” on who’s running Venezuela, and pushed back:
We are not going to be able to allow in our hemisphere a country that becomes a crossroads for the activities of all of our adversaries around the world. … These things are direct threats to the United States, and we intend to use every element of leverage that we have to ensure that that changes.
One day later, Venezuela’s vice president – Delcy Rodriguez – was sworn in as the new president. Is she the perfect choice? No, but she is the logical choice – and appears to be adapting to her role as the transitional leader who will help guide the country back to normalcy.
By mid-week, the Trump administration seemed to have picked up the cue from Rubio and was continuing the leverage theme. Shortly after two oil tankers were seized on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “We obviously have maximum leverage over the interim authorities in Venezuela right now. And the president has made it very clear that this is a country … close by the United States that is no longer going to be sending illegal drugs to the United States of America.”
Period. End of story.
Or it should have been. But somebody forgot to tell the president. So later that day, he suggested to The New York Times that he was willing to drag out U.S. control of Venezuela for years. Can anyone say “quagmire”? All of Rubio’s hard work to turn the discussion away from the misleading concept of the U.S. “running” Venezuela was undone.
The question now is whether Rubio or anyone else can clean up the verbal miscues of President Trump when he seems to lack any semblance of “message discipline.” Does the administration realize that their most ardent supporters have no interest in foreign adventurism and that their political enemies will happily portray Trump as a reckless swaggering bully?
By the end of the week, a wild card was added to the deck when Trump announced that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would visit the White House in the next few days to present him with the Nobel Peace Prize she had won last year.
It’s perfect optics for the president to promote the Venezuela operation as a humanitarian mission, but it’s also the perfect opportunity for Trump to say something so outrageous or insulting or presumptuous that even Rubio won’t be able to rescue him.
Trump cleaned up Venezuela in a day. Now he has to clean up his own act and stop talking long enough to let it stay that way.
About Heartland Diary USA
Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,” “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.
Good article, Frank!