Carleigh’s Statement on President Trump’s Attack on Venezuela

Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela does not make the United States safer, and it sets a dangerous precedent for dictators and aspiring autocrats around the world. As Mark Twain wrote: "America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home." 

Make no mistake. Maduro was a brutal autocrat who has sacrificed his country’s economy and democracy to his own insatiable thirst for power.

And, the long history of U.S. intervention and imperial adventurism has never made the region safer, more prosperous, or more democratic. Donald Trump’s actions on Saturday demonstrate that he is either ignorant of this history—failing to learn the lessons of the failed policies of U.S. Empire—or too arrogant to accept that his administration is bound by the same international laws and lessons of history. If not his ignorance and arrogance, then it is his administration’s malevolence that would block and deport Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s brutal repression and their country’s economic collapse, murder them at sea, and then claim to be protecting their interests by attacking Venezuela, abducting their president, and putting the lives of millions of Venezuelans and Americans in danger.