Admiral Alvin Holsey resigns - Why the top U.S. commander no longer wanted to support Trump’s war against Venezuela

Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command and the top military commander for Central and South America, has stepped down – out of conscience. He no longer wanted to be part of a war that isn’t one. A war disguised as an anti-drug operation but in reality aimed at toppling a regime, using methods that recall the darker chapters of American foreign policy. Holsey, a 37-year veteran, was known as an officer of integrity – disciplined, loyal, incorruptible. But what he was ordered to do could no longer be reconciled with any oath, any law, or any conscience. Since early September, U.S. Special Operations forces, acting under direct orders from the White House, have attacked at least five boats off the Venezuelan coast. Twenty-seven people were killed. Officially, they were “suspected drug traffickers.” In reality, according to sources within the Pentagon, many of the dead were unarmed fishermen. This also matches our own investigations and the ongoing verification efforts in at least 18 of those cases.

Holsey is said to have repeatedly warned that the operations were not legally justified. There was no declaration of war, no authorization by Congress, no clear identification of armed groups. But his concerns went unheard. The orders came from the very top - from a president who publicly declared that he had authorized the CIA to conduct a covert operation against Venezuela, and from a secretary of defense who now calls the Pentagon the "Department of War." Pete Hegseth, a Trump loyalist, runs the Department of Defense like a political campaign organization. In recent months, he has replaced an entire generation of top officers - those who thought too independently or did not fit the image of the "patriotic warrior." General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - dismissed. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman at the head of the Navy - dismissed. Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s military representative - dismissed. Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Kruse, head of military intelligence - dismissed. And now Holsey, who dared to utter the word "illegal."

Hegseth sees it differently. At a mass assembly of generals and admirals at the Marine base in Quantico, he recently announced that he wanted to "rid the armed forces of woke garbage" and remove the term "toxic leadership" from the military’s vocabulary. It was less a speech than a manifesto - an ideological purge under the banner of discipline, obedience, and patriotism. But Holsey did not fit into this new system. He was too composed, too law-abiding, too professional for a war based on political rage rather than military necessity. According to insiders, he refused to carry out orders that he considered violations of international law - especially the targeted killings of alleged smugglers on the high seas. For him, staff members said, this was not "drug enforcement" but "an execution campaign."

The administration justifies the attacks as national self-defense - pointing to America’s drug crisis. But the reality tells a different story: the overdoses currently killing hundreds of thousands of Americans come from fentanyl out of Mexico, not cocaine from Venezuela. The supposed threat from the south is a construction - political, symbolic, dangerous. Meanwhile, the pressure is growing. Ten thousand U.S. soldiers are now stationed in the Caribbean, eight warships and a submarine operate off the Venezuelan coast. In internal documents, the term "drug enforcement" has long since been replaced by "regional stabilization" - a phrase that traditionally signals in Washington the imminent toppling of an unfriendly government.

Holsey recognized where this was heading: toward a war that is neither declared, nor legitimized, nor controlled. A war that bends the rules of law until they break. He left because he knew that silence means consent. The Pentagon’s official statement sounded routine - thanks for 37 years of service, a note about upcoming retirement. But between the lines, it said something else: that someone no longer wanted to go along. That an admiral preferred to leave rather than remain part of a system that wages war and calls it peace.

In an army where obedience once again counts more than morality, that is an act of rare clarity. Alvin Holsey lost his position - and kept his integrity. And perhaps one day it will be said: he was the last one who still knew where the line runs between an order and a crime.