‘We need to go in!’ GOP lawmaker salivates over oil company 'field day' invasion promises

Amid the Trump administration’s military escalations against Venezuela, one Florida Republican is salivating at the prospect of a full-scale military invasion, arguing that a U.S. military invasion would be “very good news for the American economy.”

“Venezuela, for those Americans who do not understand why we need to go in, basically [it’s] for three reasons,” said Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), speaking with Fox’s David Asman, The Hill reported Tuesday.

Those three reasons, Salazar explained, were for American oil companies to have “a field day” in enriching themselves with Venezuela’s oil reserves, the single-largest proven oil reserves in the world, to curb terrorism, and to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration has designated as a narco-terrorist.

Tensions between the United States and Venezuela have ramped up in recent weeks, starting with President Donald Trump’s strikes on suspected drug-carrying sea vessels in the Caribbean, strikes that critics – including some Republicans – have called illegal "extrajudicial killings.” Tensions escalated further after a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group was deployed to Venezuela’s coast, with the Trump administration considering outright assassinating Maduro as recently as September.

“American companies can go in and fix all the oil rigs and everything that has to do with the Venezuelan petroleum companies or everything that has to do with oil and the derivatives,” Salazar continued.

The United States has a storied history of enacting or attempting to enact regime change in South America, typically under the guise of concern for human rights abuses, but in almost all cases was sparked by countries’ enacting economic models that imposed restrictions on international corporations and their access to its resources and labor.

Such was the case with Chile in 1973, when a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the Democratically elected leader Salvador Allende, and at the behest of American mining and communication companies that had been stripped of their control of Chile’s labor and resources under Allende’s leadership.

While Salazar championed the idea of invading Venezuela, most Americans disagree. A recent poll from CBS News and YouGov shows that 70% of Americans were against U.S. military action in Venezuela.