On September 2, the United States conducted a sensational military strike on a speedboat in the southern Caribbean Sea in violation of both international and US law. The extravagant attack killed 11 civilians on board, whom US President Donald Trump had magically intuited to be drug traffickers affiliated with Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.
The spectacle was staged amid the ongoing deployment of US warships off the Venezuelan coast under the pretence of fighting “narcoterrorists” whose ringleader, according to the current Trumpian narrative, is Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – no surprise given the country’s lengthy role as a thorn in the side of US imperialism. . . .
But why the sudden need on Trump’s part to project a warrior image by blowing up a speedboat in the Caribbean? To put it briefly, it serves as a convenient distraction from the president’s dismal failure on other fronts to live up to his super-tough-guy vision of himself.
His ultimatums to Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, for example, have proved fruitless. Ditto for intermittent pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wrap up the genocide in the Gaza Strip, where in less than two years Israel has officially killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.