Inside the DOW’s Operations Against Narco-Terrorists and Venezuela

The big issue in Washington right now is what is the United States trying to get out of ongoing operations around Venezuela? 

Very rarely is it the case that the question occupying minds on Capitol Hill and in think tanks is the same one everyday Americans are asking. But what’s happening between America and Venezuela is a rare exception. 

A recent CBS/YouGov poll found that 76% of Americans believe the administration needs to explain its position on the use of military force in Venezuela.

The same poll found that 53% are in support of the strikes against the narco-terrorists looking to bring drugs into the United States, but 70% of Americans are against taking military action in Venezuela.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters at a cabinet meeting that “we’re going to start doing those strikes on land” in Venezuela, too.

To provide that explanation, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson is on this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown” about the Department of War’s ongoing operations in our near abroad. 

For over 90 days, the United States has been performing airstrikes in the waters surrounding Latin and South America—the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific. There have been over 20 of these strikes targeting what the government has claimed are narco-terrorists—people attempting to bring drugs into the United States.

Throughout the campaign, the narco-terrorist strikes have been tied to Venezuela and the regime of Nicolas Maduro. 

The Trump administration has tried to make that connection more explicit and more intense in recent weeks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced it would be designating the Cartel de los Soles, or the Cartel of the Sun, a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Nov. 16, a designation that became effective on November 24. In the release, Rubio named Maduro the head of the Cartel of the Sun.

But the Cartel of the Sun isn’t your normal cartel. It’s actually a slang term that Venezuelan journalists started to use in the 1990s to describe corrupt military and law enforcement officials that are involved in drug running. Cartel of the Sun comes from the “sun” insignias on their military epaulettes.

With the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, however, it’s given the Trump administration “options” on how to further deal with Maduro and the drug trade to the nation’s south, Wilson told The Daily Signal. What the president ultimately decides to do with that designation remains to be seen.

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