63% of US Voters Oppose Attack on Venezuela as Trump’s March to War Accelerates

This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Brad Reed

President Donald Trump has taken increasingly aggressive actions against Venezuela in recent weeks, but a new poll released Wednesday shows US voters are not on board with a new war.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University found that 63% of voters oppose military operations inside Venezuela, with just 25% registering support.

What’s more, a US military strike in Venezuela would draw significant opposition even from Republican voters, 33% of whom told Quinnipiac that they would oppose such an action. Eighty-nine percent of Democratic voters and 68% of independent voters said they were opposed to a US military campaign in Venezuela.

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Trump’s policy of bombing suspected drug trafficking boats in international waters, which many legal experts consider to be acts of murder, drew significantly less opposition in the new survey than a prospective attack on Venezuela, but it is still unpopular, with 42% in favor and 53% opposed.

A potential war is also unpopular with Venezuelans, as a recent survey from Caracas-based pollster Datanalisis found 55% opposed to a foreign military attack on their nation, with 23% in favor.

The Trump administration’s boat strikes, which have now killed at least 99 people, have been just one aspect of its campaign of military aggression against Venezuela. The US military last week seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, and Trump has said that it’s only a matter of time before the military launches strikes against targets inside the country.

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Trump on Wednesday also said that one goal of his campaign against Venezuela would be to seize the country’s oil supply.

“Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had—they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching,” Trump said while talking to reporters. “But they’re not gonna do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. They threw our companies out. And we want it back.”

Venezuela first nationalized its oil industry in 1976, and the US has no legitimate claim to the nation’s petroleum supply.

(GP)

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