Tag Archives: Bret Stephens

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US Action in Venezuela: Menacing and Unpredictable

The largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades is now operating, with nearly 20% of the Navy’s deployed warships in the region, according to a Stars and Stripes’ analysis. The deployment also includes the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Base New River. The 22nd MEU consists of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (Reinforced), Combat Logistics Battalion 26 and the Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.

Additionally, a squadron of Marine Corps F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft has been sent to Puerto Rico, where the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads has become a staging area for U.S. forces in the region, according to Task & Purpose, a military-focused news publication.

Other American aircraft, including an AC-130J Ghostrider, an Air Force gunship designed for close air support, air interdiction and armed reconnaissance, have been spotted operating in El Salvador. The aircraft, known for being the most heavily armed gunship in history, “plays a critical role in supporting ground operations, providing close air support to troops in contact, conducting armed reconnaissance missions, and engaging enemy targets” according to The Aviationist.

An AC-130J Ghostrider being refueled

The New York Times has reported that U.S. officials ran a war game during President Trump’s first term to assess what the Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s fall might unleash. “The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.”

Nevertheless, asked if he would rule out U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, Trump said on Monday “No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything.”

And then, of course, no matter what happens, will it matter? Mary Speck, former executive director of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission, wrote today in the Dispatch, “The United States—for all its military might—cannot defeat “narco-terrorism” unilaterally by ousting a corrupt and brutal dictator. Whatever the end game of the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, the region’s drug cartels have nothing to fear.”.

“What is the balance of risk? ,” opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote in November 19s New York Times. “Unintended consequences must be weighed against the predictable risks of inaction…And Trump’s hesitation will be read, especially in Moscow and Beijing, as a telling signal of weakness that can only embolden them, just as President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did.”

“Any morally serious person should want this to end,” Stephens opined. “The serious question is whether American intervention would make things even worse.”

As Puck observed on Nov. 20, “Trump’s plan for Venezuela may be a mystery even to himself. “I think he thinks about what will make him look tough, but he doesn’t think much beyond that,” said John Bolton. “He never does.”

What does the Trump administration want to achieve in this dramatic effort and what will be the cost? America waits.

U.S. Forces Now in the Caribbean

Up to 15,000 U.S. troops are in the area.
USS Newport News SSN-750
Four F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadrons 31, 37, 87, and 213 from embarked Carrier Air Wing Eight aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), and a U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress operate as a joint force with the Gerald R. Ford, Nov. 13, 2025. US Navy photo
  • The “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana, Va.
  • The “Ragin Bulls” of VFA 37 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
  • The “Golden Warriors” of VFA 87 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
  • The “Black Lions” of VFA 213 – F/A-18F – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
  • The “Gray Wolves” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 142 – EA-18G – from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.
  • The “Bear Aces” of Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 124 – E-2D – from Naval Air Station Norfolk, Va.
  • The “Rawhides” of Fleet Logistics Squadron (VRC) 40 Det. – C-2A – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.
  • The “Spartans” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 70 – MH-60R – from Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla.
  • The “Tridents” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 9 – MH-60S – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.

Carrier Air Wing 8


USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) with 9 embarked squadrons of Carrier Air Wing Eight
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96)
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan (DDG 72)
Air and missile defense command ship USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81)

Littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS-13)

Guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG – 70)

Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7)

Amphibious transport dock ship USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28)

Amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD-17)

Guided missile destroyer USS Gravely (DDG-107)

Guided missile destroyer USS Stockdale (DDG-106)

“Militarily, the table is set quite effectively for air strikes,” retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who led U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, from 2006 to 2009, recently told Task & Purpose. “Now it’s up to [President Trump] to decide.”

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Is “Safety” the new goal in journalism?

Nearly 300 reporters, editors, and other employees at the Wall Street Journal sent a letter to the publisher on Tuesday asserting the Opinion section’s “lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its  apparent disregard for evidence, undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources.”

So far, so good. One would hope that Opinion pieces in the WSJ are factual, although there’s not always agreement on “the facts.”

But the letter went on to criticize one opinion piece, “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism,” noting that “multiple employees of color publicly spoke out about the pain this Opinion piece caused them.”

Is this what it’s come to? Newspapers shouldn’t publish Opinion pieces that may make some staff feel discomfort.

This reminds me of the brouhaha over the New York Times’ Opinion section running an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that called for the U.S. government to deploy military troops to deter looting amid protests sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A slew of New York Times reporters and editors revolted, claiming  in high dudgeon that the op-ed endangered their Black colleagues and contained factual errors.

Aggrieved Times staffers went so far as to tweet a screenshot of the piece’s headline captioned with the same phrase: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”

Even the staff’s unions jumped in, issuing a statement “…in response to a clear threat to the health and safety of journalists we represent.”

Nonsense!

This kind of overreaction is just another example of the current insistence of the fragile among us that society must focus on ensuring all people are “safe,” that their self-esteem isn’t damaged.

An op-ed pissed somebody off. Some reporters found an op-ed in their own newspaper objectionable. So what.

I spent 10 years as a reporter at The Oregonian. I disagreed, sometimes vehemently, with editorials and opinion pieces in the paper, but I never felt threatened by them.

Bari Weiss, a former writer and opinion editor at the New York Times, tied the turmoil over Cotton’s op-ed to a conflict between the “Old Guard” that “lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism” and a “New Guard” with “a different worldview” that endorses “ ‘safetyism’, in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.”

“Heaven forbid an opinion on a newspaper’s op-ed page should offend someone,” wrote Washington Post  columnist Kathleen Parker.

Or as one the New York Times’ own columnists, Bret Stephens, put it, “As important as it is to try to keep people safe against genuine threats, it is not the duty of the paper to make people feel safe by refusing to publish a dismaying op-ed.”

Yes, being a reporter can be dangerous. Forty-nine journalists were killed in 2019, 57 were being held hostage and 389 were in prison, according to the non-profit group Reporters Without Borders.

murderedjournalist

Javier Valdez Cárdenas, 50, a veteran journalist who specialized in covering drug trafficking, was gunned down in broad daylight in Culiacán, the capital of Mexico’s northwestern state of Sinaloa.

But who was in imminent danger because Sen. Tom Cotton wrote an inflammatory op-ed?

The exaggerated sensitivity seen today on many college campuses is not modulating as students graduate. It is being retained as graduates enter the workforce.

Weiss thinks what’s going on at the New York Times is representative of what’s happening across all U.S. media.  “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes and the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same,” Weiss wrote on Twitter. “They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption.”