(Dobbs) How Can We Possibly Know?

Is the self-described "President of Peace" taking us to war?

The United States has been blowing boats out of the water in the Pacific and the Caribbean, alleging that they were smuggling narcotics. There is reason to believe that at least some of them were but also misgivings that some of them weren’t.

How can we possibly know? No one at the Pentagon shows us any proof to justify what it’s doing: extrajudicial executions. The death count now is put at 43. The men who were killed could just as easily have been taken alive. All we get is tweet after tweet from the secretary of war— “secretary of defense” in this case is questionable— announcing yet another deadly strike and purporting to know exactly who was in the boat. All the screwups during ICE raids, however, raises questions about that. Yesterday was the latest. The tenth.

Now he announces that we’re moving an aircraft carrier strike group, including the world’s biggest warship, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, all the way from the Adriatic Sea, where it arrived only four days ago, to the waters off Latin America. But they don’t tell us what’s so urgent. All the Pentagon reveals is that the aim is to “dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the Homeland.”

Which means what? We need an aircraft carrier with 60+ fighter jets and the destroyers and cruisers that escort it to take out more speedboats and submersibles that might be transporting drugs? The U.S.S. Ford and its strike group will join three American destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, and an amphibious expeditionary unit with more than 4,500 Marines which already have gathered in the Caribbean. Or are we staging for some kind of full-scale invasion of Venezuela, which President Trump says is a major force behind drugs (which some drug experts, including those at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, contradict)?

That would mean war, but the only hint the president himself has given us is, “The land is next.” What land? The land where narcotics factories produce their poison, or the homeland of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, who Trump has called a “narco-terrorist?” He has threatened war against Maduro, but if we’re going to war, given the enigmatic way this president peels back the onion for the American people, that’s hardly a heads-up.

Operating more like a king than a president, Trump already has been clear that he doesn’t intend to ask Congress— which constitutionally is supposed to exercise oversight— for permission to do whatever he decides to do. Of course the majority in Congress is led by lapdogs who wouldn’t stop Trump anyway, but the minority intends to try— including a handful of rebellious Republicans like Senator Rand Paul, who says, “We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”

It probably won’t do any good. Thursday— the same day Trump finished his one-man demolition of a part of the White House, also without asking anyone’s permission— he told reporters, “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war.” That doesn’t mean the self-described “President of Peace” isn’t taking us to war, it just means he won’t ask anyone’s approval. It means that in Donald Trump’s mind, he answers to nobody.

Nor does the Pentagon. With all these questions, it would be useful to have a seasoned Pentagon press corps. But after Secretary Hegseth less than two weeks ago demanded a signed pledged from journalists not to report anything that the Pentagon hasn’t pre-approved and threatened expulsion for anyone who refused, virtually every legitimate military reporter handed in their badges and packed up their things and walked out.

Who’s left? The likes of the Gateway Pundit, the National Pulse, Real America’s Voice, One America News, Human Events, podcaster Tim Pool, the Just the News website, Frontlines by Turning Point USA. Even LindellTV, run by “MyPillow’s” conspiratorial CEO Mike Lindell.

Comforting? It’s what a Pentagon spokesman called “the next generation of journalism at the Pentagon.” What are the odds that any of these right-wing outlets, many of which supported Donald Trump’s deluded diatribes after 2020 about a “rigged election,” will ask the questions the rest of us would like answers for?

Don’t lose any sleep while you wait. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon seems to feel any obligation to tell the American people any more than the minimum about what the American government is doing. Their mouthpieces get defensive when someone even asks. Just like the destruction of the East Wing, if Trump is looking to start a war, we probably can expect him to spring it on us with little or no warning. The expression is, post facto.

The more plain-spoken expression is not appropriate for a family website.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net