\n<\/p>\n
Since coming down the escalator in 2015 to announce his first presidential run, Donald Trump has presented himself as a break from the traditional hawkish foreign policy in the United States.<\/p>\n
The US president has even criticised some of his political rivals as \u201cwarmongers\u201d and \u201cwar hawks\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But Trump\u2019s move to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and announce that the US will \u201crun\u201d the Latin American country has drawn comparisons with the regime change wars that he built a political career rejecting.<\/p>\n Some critics from Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who backed his message of focusing on the country\u2019s own issues instead of conflicts abroad, are criticising Washington\u2019s march to war with Venezuela.<\/p>\n Still, Trump\u2019s grip on Republican politics appears to remain firm, with most legislators from the party praising Trump\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n \u201cTo President Trump and his team, you should take great pride in setting in motion the liberation of Venezuela,\u201d Senator Lindsey Graham wrote in a social media post.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I have often said, it is in America\u2019s national security interest to deal with the drug caliphate in our backyard, the centrepiece of which is Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n Graham\u2019s reference to a \u201cdrug caliphate\u201d seems to play on Islamophobic tropes and promote the push to liken the US attacks on alleged drug traffickers in Latin America to the so-called \u201cwar on terror\u201d.<\/p>\n The US senator heaped praise on the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize \u2013 handed to Trump by the association\u2019s chief, Gianni Infantino, in December \u2013 and called him \u201cthe GOAT of the American presidency\u201d, which stands for \u201cthe greatest of all time\u201d.<\/p>\n While it was expected that Graham and other foreign policy hawks in Trump\u2019s orbit would back the moves against Venezuela, even some of the Republican sceptics of foreign interventions cheered the abduction of Maduro.<\/p>\n Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the most vocal critics of hawkish foreign policy on the right, poked fun at the \u201ccapture\u201d of the Venezuelan president.<\/p>\n \u201cMaduro is gonna hate CECOT,\u201d he wrote on X, referring to the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent hundreds of suspected gang members without due process.<\/p>\n Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, who has been a leading voice in decrying Congress\u2019s war-making power, only expressed muted disapproval of Trump\u2019s failure to seek lawmakers\u2019 authorisation for military action in Venezuela.<\/p>\n \u201cTime will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost,\u201d he wrote in a lengthy statement that mostly argued against bringing \u201csocialism\u201d to the US.<\/p>\n \u201cBest though, not to forget, that our founders limited the executive\u2019s power to go to war without Congressional authorisation for a reason \u2013 to limit the horror of war and limit war to acts of defence. Let\u2019s hope those precepts of peace are not forgotten in our justified relief that Maduro is gone and the Venezuelan people will have a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Early on Saturday morning, Republican Senator Mike Lee questioned the legality of the attack. \u201cI look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorisation for the use of military force,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n Lee later said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him that US troops were executing a legal arrest warrant against Maduro.<\/p>\n \u201cThis action likely falls within the president\u2019s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect US personnel from an actual or imminent attack,\u201d the senator said.<\/p>\n Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of the few dissenting voices.<\/p>\n \u201cAmericans\u2019 disgust with our own government\u2019s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going,\u201d\u00a0 Greene wrote on X.<\/p>\n Greene, a former Trump ally who fell out with the US president and is leaving Congress next week, rejected the argument that Trump ordered Maduro\u2019s \u201ccapture\u201d because of the Venezuelan president\u2019s alleged involvement in the drug trade.<\/p>\n She noted that Venezuela is not a major exporter of fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the US.<\/p>\n She also underscored that, last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drug trafficker who was serving a 45-year sentence in a US jail.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRegime change, funding foreign wars, and American\u2019s [sic] tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged,\u201d Greene said.<\/p>\n Congressman Tomas Massie, another Republican, shared a speech he delivered in the House of Representatives earlier this month, warning that attacking Venezuela is about \u201coil and regime change\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAre we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans, who will likely become refugees, and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?\u201d Massie said in the remarks.<\/p>\n \u201cIf that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n While Massie and Greene are outliers in their party, Trump\u2019s risky moves in Venezuela were a success in the short term: Maduro is in US custody at a minimal cost to Washington.<\/p>\n Similarly, few Republicans opposed the US war in Iraq when then-President George W Bush stood under the \u201cmission accomplished\u201d sign on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after toppling Iraq\u2019s leader, Saddam Hussein, in 2003.<\/p>\n But there is now a near consensus across the political spectrum that the Iraq invasion was a geopolitical disaster.<\/p>\n The fog of war continues to hang over Venezuela, and it is unclear who is in charge of the country, or how Trump will \u201crun\u201d it.<\/p>\n The US president has not ruled out deploying \u201cboots on the ground\u201d to Venezuela, raising the prospect of a US occupation and the possibility of another Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.<\/p>\n \u201cDo we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out in\u2026 Libya, Iraq or Syria?\u201d Massie warned in his Congress speech.<\/p>\n \u201cPrevious presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist. Now, it\u2019s the same playbook, except we\u2019re told that drugs are the WMDs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since coming down the escalator in 2015 to announce his first presidential run, Donald Trump has presented himself as a break from the traditional hawkish foreign policy in the United States. The US president has even criticised some of his political rivals as \u201cwarmongers\u201d and \u201cwar hawks\u201d. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Muted criticism<\/h2>\n
Dissent<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"