How should west respond to potential (likely) U.S. invasion of Venezuela?

[steve_bank]

All presidents get a sense of power through military force, Trump is an extreme.

Bush and Neo Cons thinking they would liberate Iraq like the Allies did France.

Obama got jazzed getting Bin Laden. He bragged about killing more terrorists than any other president.

LBJ and his administration outright lied about what was going on in Vietnam. Even when on TV ebnry day people saw what was going on. Increasing troops while as the Pentagon Papers showed the military by around 1966 concluded there was no militray solution.

Congress has long ceded the power to use militray force the president. All presidents and admonitions lie and shade the truth. It is a matter of degree.

In 2011, Obama authorized the deployment of about 100 U.S. military advisers to central Africa to assist regional forces in combating the LRA, a notoriously violent rebel group led by Joseph Kony. The reasons for this deployment were:

Combating atrocities The LRA had murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of civilians, mostly children, across Central Africa. The mission was framed as a humanitarian effort to end the group's reign of terror.

Providing training and assistance The special operations forces provided training, advice, and assistance to local partner nations, but were not intended to engage in direct combat except for self-defense.

Upholding national security interests Obama stated that the deployment served U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by supporting regional security and efforts to remove Joseph Kony from the battlefield.

Under President Bill Clinton, the United States conducted several notable missile strikes, primarily in retaliation for terrorist attacks and as part of military actions in Iraq and the Balkans
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Operation Infinite Reach (1998)

Target: On August 20, 1998, the U.S. military launched simultaneous cruise missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in response to al-Qaeda's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Afghanistan: The strikes hit training camps believed to be used by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

Sudan: The target in Sudan was the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum. The Clinton administration claimed the plant was being used to produce chemical weapons for al-Qaeda. However, subsequent reports cast doubt on the intelligence linking the factory to bin Laden or chemical weapons, and the U.S. later backed away from its initial claims.

Operations in Iraq (1993, 1998)

1993 Baghdad strike: In June 1993, Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on the Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters in Baghdad. This was in retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait.

Operation Desert Fox (1998): In December 1998, the U.S. and the United Kingdom launched a four-day bombing campaign against Iraqi targets. The action was aimed at punishing Saddam Hussein's regime for its refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.

The Sudan pharmaceutical company attack.

Context of the Attack

Retaliation for Embassy Bombings:

The missile strikes were a response to the August 7, 1998, terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which were linked to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Operation Infinite Reach:
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The strikes on al-Shifa and alleged al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan were codenamed Operation Infinite Reach.
Controversy and Dissent:
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The decision to bomb al-Shifa was controversial, with critics arguing the U.S. lacked sufficient evidence of its connection to chemical weapons and that Clinton may have been trying to distract from domestic issues.

Target and Justification

U.S. Justification:

President Clinton stated there was "convincing evidence" that the factory was involved in the production of chemical weapons, specifically a precursor element for a nerve gas, linking it to bin Laden's terrorist network.

Sudanese and Independent Claims:
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Sudanese officials and later tests by independent labs found no evidence of chemical weapons production at al-Shifa, a factory that produced essential medicines for the country.

Aftermath

Factory Destruction:
The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory was destroyed in the attack, leading to the loss of its production capacity for essential Sudanese medicines.