The Legacy of The War on Terror Reaches South America

While Trump openly manufactures a war in Venezuela, Israel never stops attacking the Palestinians

Edited by Sam Thielman 

I'D BEEN TRYING to find the words for the rapidly coalescing U.S. assault on Venezuela. President Trump has ordered the CIA to return to its core competency: overthrowing left-wing governments in the Western Hemisphere. Barely an afterthought, and certainly not an impediment, are innocent men like Chad Joseph, whose families are left to petition a disinterested administration for the slightest proof of their slain relative's claimed threat to U.S. national security. The administration has been openly manufacturing a war in a manner so blatant as to recall the Iraq buildup. 

Last week, the U.S. Navy even briefly took prisoners. Their brief detention followed the sixth of the U.S.' blatantly illegal lethal strikes on boats full of people whom the Trump administration are attempting to portray as drug smugglers—as if that would justify this naked aggression—connected through manipulated intelligence to Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro. The Navy released its prisoners on Saturday, but during the captives’ time aboard ship, I couldn't help but think of a decade ago, when the U.S.S. Boxer spent weeks as a sea-based detention center for a man named Ahmed Abdelkadir Warsame, all beyond the reach of international law, or what remains of it. 

The U.S. military is using Puerto Rico as a staging ground for… we currently know not what. What we do know is that the administration has ordered a substantial sea-air asset buildup, containing not only the expected destroyers but also heavy bombers, drones, F-35s, AC-130 gunship aircraft typically seen (along with A-10s) providing close air support to infantry, and even the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment. I'm struggling to think of a comparably large Western Hemisphere buildup during the past 25 years. Yet the intermittent and bloodless coverage the buildup has received suggests to me that the typical U.S. media indifference to Puerto Rico is in effect. 

This entire coercive enterprise might be the beneficiary of several intersecting normalizations. The abrupt and unexplained departure of combatant commander Adm. Alvin Holsey during a military buildup like this would have occasioned sustained coverage in another era. Now it feels already forgotten. After a failed attempt earlier this month to stop the strikes—"unless authorized," in Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)'s ominous words—Congressional Democrats (and Rand Paul) are left lamenting process concerns and stonewalled requests for information instead of moving to block funding for the buildup. Adopting a stance of unqualified opposition seems out of the question. All Secretary Pete Hegseth has to say is that these fishermen are "the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere" and it seems like the opposition mumbles through its objections, even without anyone, as far as I can tell, believing what the administration says. 

All that is to say I felt relieved to read Daniel Larison using words that I hadn't quite been able to find. Larison, a genuine antiwar conservative, wrote today about Trump training his ire on the Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a rare Colombian left-winger achieving state power:

The so-called conflict that the president has invented out of thin air is not restricted to any particular place, nor does it focus on any one particular group. As far as the administration is concerned, they can attack anyone they choose no matter where they are. The administration recognizes no limits on its actions.

Every word here could apply to the War on Terror. After nearly 25 years of the War on Terror, it should not be remotely surprising that an administration would reach for its authorizations and rhetoric. They work too well not to export. It doesn't ultimately matter that whatever the U.S. unleashes upon Venezuela, or now potentially Colombia, will not have a formal connection to the War on Terror. Its template is all the connection necessary, particularly if elite opposition reverts to type and rolls over. As for the GOP, no wonder Larison writes that "Perhaps the last time there was this much mindless support in the party for a Republican president’s aggressive foreign policy was in the darkest days of the Bush era." 

Did we ever truly leave those days? If so, we never dismantled the structures built during that era, meaning that returning to them will always be an option. 

PERHAPS THIS is a tangent, but seeing the heritage of the War on Terror in South America reminds me of the heritage of the 1980s Dirty Wars on the War on Terror. You can learn a lot of that from Empire's Workshop by the esteemed Greg Grandin; or, for that matter, the memoir Black Ops, penned by the Dirty Wars and War on Terror veteran CIA operator Ric Prado. Similarly, I have a ton of respect for the Pulitzer-winning journalist Tim Weiner—an OG who blurbed REIGN—and one of the cleverest things he does in his recent book The Mission is to connect architects of the CIA's War on Terror like Counterterrorism Center chief Jose Rodriguez to a pre-9/11 shootdown and coverup of a plane in Peru carrying not drugs but American missionaries. Rodriguez would later say that the heated internal investigation taught him "valuable lessons, which I used in the years following 9/11 to try to protect the people who worked for me." By, for example, destroying the evidence. 

IF THERE WAS EVER a ceasefire, no one told Israel. Israel has killed at least 80 Palestinians since the announcement of last week's ceasefire, validating UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese's saw "You Cease, I Fire." When Trump claims, as he did yesterday, that the ceasefire is holding, he is permitting Israel to continue. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner might signal their dissatisfaction with Israel, but it means as little as when the Biden administration would do the same, particularly when the State Department is preemptively blaming Hamas for violating the ceasefire. Only now Hamas, having delivered its final living hostages in accordance with Witkoff and Kushner's interventions, has no more leverage over the Israelis. 

Meanwhile, don't miss FOREVER WARS friend Jasper Nathaniel's harrowing eyewitness/first-hand account of settler violence in the West Bank. The IDF led Nathaniel into an ambush sprung by settlers to assault Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest. 

SOME PALESTINIAN HOSTAGES returned to Gaza with accounts of sexual torture the Israelis inflicted upon them. Given the subject of my next book, this has concentrated my imagination. Wartime prisons where impunity reigns tend toward sexual violence. That should also guide our understanding of the sexual torture ICE is inflicting upon queer and trans people in its cages.

NOT THAT IT WOULD BE OK if ICE "only" captured undocumented migrants, but ProPublica tallies at least 170 U.S. citizens who have been detained by ICE. 

I HAVEN’T HAD time to read this, to be honest, but I'm glad The New Yorker called attention to the extended ICE detention of Leqaa Kordia. I hope they called attention to the flagrant role in that detention played by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the billionaire heiress who appears to desire staying on under Zohran Mamdani. 

"CHAT AND I are really close lately,” is a cursed sentence about ChatGPT spoken by Army Maj. Gen. William "Hank" Taylor, the acting commander of U.S. Forces-Korea. DefenseScoop reports that Taylor is "personally leaning on existing and emerging AI capabilities to help influence and shape how he operates as a leader." At least there isn't any international flashpoint on the Korean peninsula where self-entrancement by a U.S. military commander could have tragic repercussions. 

JOHN BOLTON NEVER THOUGHT the leopards of the Espionage Act would eat his face when he called for Edward Snowden to "swing from a tall oak tree." Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent had what I considered a powerful and well-calibrated response to Bolton's bullshit indictment last week: 

John Bolton is an unrepentant war criminal and one of most odious national security hawks in Washington. As part of his antipathy for press freedom, whistleblowers, and anyone who challenges the national security state, he called for both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden to be executed for exposing abuses of power by our government. Similarly, he called for journalist Julian Assange to get “at least 176 years in jail” for publishing truthful information about U.S. war crimes. Now, Bolton, like Manning, Snowden, and Assange has been indicted under the Espionage Act.

We at Defending Rights & Dissent were one of the leading voices in Washington in support of Manning, Snowden, and Assange. And we remain the leading voice on reforming the Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to prosecute courageous whistleblowers and journalists.

As part of our reform proposal, we advocated the Espionage Act be amended to require the government to prove a defendant intended to harm the national security of the US. Nothing in the indictment of Bolton indicates the government believes Bolton had that level of intent. As a result, we do not believe Bolton should be indicted under the Espionage Act. This is the same position we took regarding Donald Trump, who himself has been responsible for abusing the Espionage Act to silence journalists and whistleblowers.

The Espionage Act is an overly broad, archaic law. As a result, it is ripe for selective, politically motivated enforcement. It is for these reasons that Bolton championed it as a tool for political persecutions against whistleblowers and journalists. And it is for this reason the Trump administration has chosen it as a tool for their petty retaliation against a national security hawk who shares much of their views on the use of the Espionage Act.

Enough is enough. It is well past time to reform the Espionage Act once and for all.  

WHO KNEW FINISHING a book was hard? While asking for your indulgence, this is very likely the final FOREVER WARS edition of October. [All this means is that Spencer won’t tell me he’s writing for you until he messages me to say he's filed.—Sam] I am on the cusp of completing my manuscript for my second book. But I'm not there, and if I'm going to reach my goal of wrapping this one by Halloween—and then using the remainder of my pre-deadline time for revisions—I need to step away from this newsletter. I know I always say this and then end up writing more. I may very well do that this time. But rather than making scheduling declarations that I inevitably break, let's say that until THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN is fully drafted, FOREVER WARS will publish on an Augustinian schedule, aiming for abstinence even if we won't truly reach it. [You people are the pear tree in this metaphor.—Sam] Thank you for your continued support.