Caribbean-American congresswoman strongly condemns Trump’s military strikes and capture of Venezuelan president

Caribbean-Amer­i­can De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­woman Yvette D. Clarke on Sat­ur­day strong­ly con­demned what she de­scribed as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s “unau­tho­rized” mil­i­tary strikes in Venezuela and the mil­i­tary’s cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Clarke, the daugh­ter of Ja­maican im­mi­grants, who rep­re­sents the 9th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in Brook­lyn, New York, told the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) that Trump act­ed with­out con­gres­sion­al au­tho­riza­tion in con­duct­ing mil­i­tary strikes in Venezuela, and force­ful­ly and uni­lat­er­al­ly caus­ing “regime change by seiz­ing Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

“In a brazen af­front to the rule of law and the US Con­sti­tu­tion and with­out any ra­tio­nal con­sid­er­a­tion of the grave con­se­quences that will in­evitably fol­low, in the dead of night, Don­ald Trump has plunged the Unit­ed States in­to yet an­oth­er dan­ger­ous for­eign en­tan­gle­ment by un­leash­ing di­rect mil­i­tary strikes up­on Venezuela’s cap­i­tal and cap­tur­ing Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his wife,” said Clarke, who al­so chairs the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus (CBC).

“For years, Maduro’s au­thor­i­tar­i­an rule has op­pressed Venezue­lans and weak­ened their coun­try. He was a despot, with no re­gard for his own na­tion. His peo­ple have en­dured ex­treme hard­ship, po­lit­i­cal un­rest, un­cer­tain­ty, and in­sta­bil­i­ty un­der his lead­er­ship — so much so that many took great risks to seek asy­lum be­hind our bor­ders,” she added. “How­ev­er, this is not a case of the ends jus­ti­fy­ing the means.

“De­spite this mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion and con­sid­er­ing Don­ald Trump’s com­ments in its af­ter­math, it has be­come crys­tal clear that top­pling Maduro for nar­co-traf­fick­ing was far from the pri­ma­ry rea­son the ad­min­is­tra­tion en­gaged mil­i­tar­i­ly with Venezuela,” Clarke con­tin­ued. “This reck­less and non-con­gres­sion­al­ly sanc­tioned regime change was dri­ven not by na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, but by the pur­suit of oil rich­es. This ac­tion has no place in US for­eign pol­i­cy. It is an il­le­gal and il­le­git­i­mate doc­trine of ex­treme ag­gres­sion sanc­tioned sole­ly by the ex­ec­u­tive branch.”

The con­gress­woman not­ed that since the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion first ini­ti­at­ed strikes in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela, un­der the guise of avert­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ing, “Amer­i­cans have over­whelm­ing­ly op­posed these il­le­gal mil­i­tary ac­tions and have right­ly al­ready re­ject­ed this un­hinged es­ca­la­tion.”

She said Trump “lacked both the right­eous­ness and the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spect to bring his war be­fore Con­gress.

“Had he done so, I would have vot­ed no,” she de­clared. “This im­pul­sive in­ter­ven­tion­ism does not make Amer­i­cans safer; it leaves our glob­al rep­u­ta­tion in tat­ters and fur­ther desta­bi­lizes an al­ready volatile re­gion and our South Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­la­tions.

“Worse still, Don­ald Trump has now threat­ened a last­ing US oc­cu­pa­tion of Venezuela and re­fus­es to rule out a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence of Amer­i­can troops on the ground,” Clarke added. “The Venezue­lan peo­ple de­serve their chance at free­dom. They do not wish to sub­sti­tute their dic­ta­tor with Amer­i­ca’s.

“The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ac­tions to­day will on­ly serve to em­bold­en and im­plic­it­ly en­dorse our ad­ver­saries to car­ry out their own mil­i­tary ag­gres­sions against sov­er­eign na­tions, erod­ing in­ter­na­tion­al norms and the rule of law,” she con­tin­ued. “They have al­so paved the way for fur­ther in­ter­ven­tions by Don­ald Trump and his en­ablers.”

Clarke warned that Trump’s “im­pe­r­i­al pur­suits will not end with Venezuela.

“If left unchecked, more il­le­gal mil­i­tary ag­gres­sions loom just over our hori­zon,” she said. “They will, un­doubt­ed­ly, come at great cost to Amer­i­can lives, re­sources, and moral stand­ing.”

The CBC, un­der Clarke’s lead­er­ship, al­so said sep­a­rate­ly that Trump’s de­ci­sion to by­pass Con­gress and con­duct a mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion to cap­ture Maduro and bring him to the Unit­ed States to stand tri­al is “a grave and il­le­gal abuse of pow­er.

“It is al­so in­de­fen­si­ble that Pres­i­dent Trump would choose to fun­nel tax­pay­er dol­lars in­to unau­tho­rized mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela for the ex­pressed in­ter­est of oil, rather than ad­dress­ing the ur­gent needs of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans strug­gling with ris­ing health care costs,” the CBC said.

The CBC added that Trump’s stat­ed in­ten­tion to as­sume con­trol over Venezuela is “whol­ly un­ac­cept­able”, call­ing on the ad­min­is­tra­tion, “with­out hes­i­ta­tion, to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive brief­in­gs to the Gang of Eight, as well as to all Mem­bers of the House and Sen­ate.”

The “Gang of Eight” (“G8”) in the US Con­gress refers to a small, bi­par­ti­san group of top-rank­ing lead­ers and in­tel­li­gence com­mit­tee chairs who ob­tain sen­si­tive clas­si­fied brief­in­gs from the pres­i­dent and his ad­min­is­tra­tion, en­sur­ing im­por­tant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­for­ma­tion is shared while re­strict­ing ac­cess to on­ly es­sen­tial leg­is­la­tors.

NEW YORK, Jan 4, , CMC