The White House’s Susie maneuver appears to contradict the official narrative that portrays the attack as an anti-drug campaign.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has suggested that U.S. military attacks on drug smuggling ships across Latin America are ultimately aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In comments published in Vanity Fair on Tuesday, Wiles appeared to contradict President Donald Trump’s administration’s stated rationale behind the anti-drug bombing.
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“He (President Trump) wants to keep blowing up boats until President Maduro cries with his uncle, and people who are much smarter than me on that say he will do that,” Wiles was quoted as saying.
Vanity Fair published a lengthy profile on Wiles on Tuesday, hours after the Pentagon announced three more ship attacks in the Eastern Pacific, killing eight people.
“So this is not a war on cartels. This is regime change,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote about X in response to Wiles’ comments. “In any case, it’s completely illegal and nonsense.”
The US administration has stepped up attacks on ships as it strengthens its military presence near Venezuela, raising speculation that Washington is planning a new regime-change war against Maduro’s leftist government.
President Trump has repeatedly asserted over the past few months that the Venezuelan president’s “days are numbered.”
Last week, U.S. forces raided and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, an act the city of Caracas denounced as “international piracy.”
President Trump, who recently pardoned convicted drug trafficker and former right-wing Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, has portrayed the boat strike and pressure on Mr. Maduro as an anti-drug campaign.
Legal experts say the targeting of ships in international waters in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, where more than 90 people were killed, likely violates U.S. and international law and amounts to extrajudicial executions.
The Pentagon has provided only grainy footage as evidence that the targeted ships were carrying drugs and has referred to the victims as “narco-terrorists.”
The United States has designated the drug lord as a “terrorist” group, but UN experts reject that designation as a justification for deadly bombings.
“These attacks do not appear to have been carried out in state self-defense, international or non-international armed conflict, or against individuals posing an imminent threat to life, and they violate fundamental international human rights law prohibiting the arbitrary deprivation of life,” the experts said in a report last month.
“Unprovoked attacks and killings on the high seas also violate international maritime law.”
In October, President Trump joked that the U.S. attack had stopped people from fishing near Venezuela’s coast.
Relations between Washington and Caracas have been strained since the rise of President Maduro’s late predecessor Hugo Chávez in the early 2000s. The oil-rich South American country has been subject to harsh U.S. sanctions for years.
Trump, who won the newly created FIFA Peace Prize earlier this month, has campaigned against further U.S. wars and billed himself as a president of peace.
But the regime has escalated its stance toward Venezuela and has also threatened Colombia, which is led by another left-wing government led by President Gustavo Petro.
The US president has refused to rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela. He also declared the country’s airspace to be “completely” closed.
Last week, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy, emphasizing the need to establish U.S. “superiority” in the Americas.
President Maduro has accused the United States of creating a “pretext” for war and has expressed openness to diplomacy with the United States, while rejecting what he calls a “slave peace.”
María Colina Machado, a prominent Venezuelan rebel who won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year, has pledged to privatize the country’s oil sector and open it to investment if President Maduro loses power.
