The question Trump and Hegseth won’t answer: Why is that flotilla in the Caribbean in the first place?

The angry queries from GOP legislators over possible U.S. military war crimes in the Caribbean are welcome. Yet, too many Republicans avoid the urgent question that hangs over the killing of more than 80 people allegedly smuggling drugs in small boats: Why is a massive American armada hovering off Venezuela in the first place?

The official response that this is a war to destroy criminal drug cartels who are poisoning Americans and thus undermining U.S. security is a transparent lie and a clumsy cover-up.

So, if drugs are only an excuse, is President Donald Trump really seeking regime change in Caracas (and has age dimmed his memory of his rants against regime change in Iraq and Libya)? Is he hoping for a domino effect on Cuba? Or is he fulfilling his self-appointed role as master of the Western Hemisphere (and perhaps of Venezuelan oil)?

As the United States faces domestic strife and serious conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Asia, Americans need to know why Trump is obsessed with war on Caracas. Congress must demand answers, now.

First, let us dispense with the myth that a mighty U.S. fleet is needed to combat Venezuelan drug cartels.

The vicious drug that claims thousands of U.S. victims and is at the center of U.S. drug interdiction efforts is fentanyl. But Venezuela neither makes nor exports fentanyl. Fentanyl comes nearly entirely from Mexico, where it is manufactured from precursors procured from China.

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Venezuela is a pass-through country for cocaine exports by criminals — not major cartels. But cocaine is mainly manufactured in Colombia and reaches the U.S. primarily via the Pacific Ocean. Only about 8% of the cocaine that enters our country comes via the Caribbean; the U.S. Coast Guard had been doing a fine job interdicting small boats and arresting smugglers before Trump’s current war.

Yet the most obvious reason Trump’s “drug war” is phony is his pardon last week of the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in 2024 in a U.S. court of conspiring to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. (His brother was convicted in 2019 of helping import another 200 tons of cocaine.)

Trump claimed Hernández received an unfair shake under President Joe Biden because “he was the president of the country,” making clear he saw the Honduran as a fellow victim of the Democratic administration. Yet, it was Trump’s own former criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove III, who, as a top U.S. Department of Justice official, pursued the conviction of Hernández and his Honduran drug ring, for which the trafficker received a sentence of 45 years.

“If there was any belief in Venezuela that [Trump] was threatening Venezuela on account of drugs, the pardon of Hernández makes clear that is not true,” I was told by Venezuelan-born Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the human rights think tank WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America), and also a distinguished fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, a global affairs center.

WOLA opposes the U.S. killings of more than 80 mostly Venezuelan civilians without any judicial process, as well as the current, cruel U.S. treatment of Venezuelan refugees.

Jiménez Sandoval, who left Caracas in 2010 but still visits, is eager to see the end of the repressive regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who refused to recognize a massive electoral victory by the Venezuelan opposition in 2024.

She hopes Maduro can be convinced to leave office through negotiations. So far, Trump has had no luck.

However, the Venezuelan activist is deeply worried that Trump may oust Maduro by force, which she fears would only lead to more disaster in Venezuela and the region. “Our concern is it would set a terrible example for the rest of Latin America,” she says.

Moreover, although Venezuelan opposition groups claim they are ready to take over, Jiménez Sandoval points out that “Venezuela is a complex country, whose institutions have been greatly weakened under Maduro. And many armed groups are operating in the country.”

There is no guarantee Maduro’s large army would melt away. Moreover, sizeable numbers of paramilitary groups, known as colectivos, as well as Colombian guerrilla fighters. are present in Venezuela. They have a strong interest in protecting their corrupt control of natural resources. As Jiménez Sandoval put it, “There are too many questions about the day after.”

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I can’t help recalling how certain George W. Bush was that the exiled Iraqi opposition would quickly take over the running of Iraq once Saddam Hussein was ousted. Instead, the returning exiles, along with U.S. troops, got mired in an Iraqi civil war between competing factions.

Despite the societal differences between Iraq and Venezuela, Trump should mind the famous Pottery Barn rule former Secretary of State Colin Powell derived from America’s disastrous involvement in Iraq: If you break it, you own it.

GOP leaders — angry at being stiffed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and at his careless handling of critical information — should stand tough and demand the details on this fake war he is refusing to provide.

Most importantly, Democrats and Republicans alike should warn Trump that they will oppose efforts to expand a war on Venezuela that has no legal or congressional justification and is based on the threat of a fictional drug war with Caracas.

Trump has huge leverage to exert on Maduro beyond a dangerous game of military chicken. The Venezuelan leader is unpopular in Latin America, and the U.S. should be allying with Venezuela’s neighbors in pushing Maduro toward recognition of the 2024 election results and exile.

GOP members will be severely punished at the polls if they let Trump blunder into an illegal military regime change based on ignorance of Venezuela and a tangle of lies about drugs.