BANG! BANG! SHOOT 'EM UP! IN VENEZUELA

Corporate colonialism dressed up in all its propagandistic finery

Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images

Last night, the United States invaded Venezuela in what President Trump called “a spectacular assault,” using “overwhelming military power” to knock out forces protecting Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, seized him and his wife, and have flown them to New York where they will be tried on charges of narco-terrorism.

President Trump is touting this of course as a huge win for American military might, U.S. sovereignty, protection of our citizens, and the safety and security of the Venezuelan people. In fact, it’s a lawless, imperialistic, colonial power grab on the part of the newest iteration of America’s corporate-political-industrial complex, aka the American Empire. Having written about this scenario repeatedly over the last two months, I’m certainly not shocked. But I’m well aware that like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, nothing about this bodes well for us or for the world.

No matter how much last night’s military operation is dressed up in propagandistic finery, described by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a full display of America’s “grit and glory,” in fact it’s an ugly and irresponsible business. The men running this show - from President Trump, to Secretary of War Hegseth, to Secretary of State Rubio, to General Dan Caine - are more like little boys playing a video game than they are responsible agents of governance. They have no idea what they have unleashed, no differently than did Eisenhower in Iran, Johnson in Vietnam, Bush in Iraq, Obama in Afghanistan, or Biden in Gaza. They are not strong, responsible men; they are immature boys, so excited about their military toys they obviously have no plan for what comes next in this scenario nor any idea of its probable consequences.

We the People should fall for none of this. Nor should we look to either party in Congress for the heft of appropriate opposition. So far they’re showing their painted-on muscles by - wait for this - asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of tweets. Even when they’re right, at this point their power has been so nullified as to make them look pathetic. Secretary of State Rubio explained his decision not to pre-notify Congress of the Venezuelan invasion by saying it was a “law enforcement” operation that didn’t require it, and the President said such notification wouldn’t have been a good idea because “they’re a lot of leakers in Congress, and we couldn’t have leaks.”

As with many things in American politics, what goes on in front of the curtain bears little resemblance to what goes on behind it.

Trump says, “We're going to run (Venezuela) until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition….because that’s what we’re all about.”

Translation: It’s ours now, and we’ll decide what to do when we figure out who will play ball. Anyone willing to be our puppet, who will play along with the oil companies, who will help us extend our hegemony over the Western hemisphere, we’ll keep. Anyone else, we’ll figure out how to sideline or get rid of.

According to the President, Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez had a “gracious” conversation with Rubio and said she’d do whatever we wished, but in public she called the invasion a “colonial war” and said Venezuela “will never be the colony of any nation.” Clearly, she’ll learn who’s boss now. We might also think Nobel Prize Winner María Corina Machado could be the next ruler of Venezuela - she has offered to lead her country through this transitional period - but Trump says “she doesn’t have the respect” of the Venezuelan people. You can translate that for yourself. Machado seems to come from the Bill Maher school of conversation with President Trump, having complimented him in the past for his dedication to the freedom of the Venezuelan people. I think she’s learning.

In his press conference, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s “money in the ground” and said “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” He also said the oil companies will be "reimbursed” for all the money they lost when they were kicked out of Venezuela in 2007.

Translation: We did it all for the oil. (It’s always worked out so well before)

Ah yes, we’ve seen this playbook before. It’s much like the coup orchestrated by the U.S. and U.K. in the 1950s’, putting the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh under house arrest and installing the Shah of Iran as the West’s puppet. Mosaddegh’s sin had been the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry, purporting the extraordinary, audacious and totally unacceptable proposition that Iranian oil should belong to the Iranian people. That coup, like most all of America’s imperialistic misadventures, had unintended consequences from which the world still suffers. It’s widely considered the main contributing factor to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the coming to power of the Ayatollah’s religious fascism in Iran.

Great work, guys. And to think you’re so clever as to be doing all this again!

Oh, to think of all the clinking champagne glasses now! American oil companies have found the champion they’ve been looking for: an American president pretty well known for knowing nothing about history, and caring about it even less. In Donald Trump they have their guy: a president with no allegiance to international law - or even to his own campaign promises - but only to whatever corporate operatives he’s doing business with that particular day. He’s lackey to the matrix of corporate power that’s the backbone of the new international order. He likes them - “They’re nice to me” - and to him, that’s all that matters.

In the latest demonstration of Trump’s intention to control what he considers his righteous purview but which others might call the world, he has decided to mark Latin America for the imprimatur of American power the way George Bush and his neocons sought to mark the Middle East. Any fool knows how that’s worked out. Yet the past has no lessons for this crowd. Restraint isn’t on their menu. According to Rubio, “If I were in Havana, I would be concerned.” And the President has said “Something has to be done about Mexico,” though thankfully, he’s not suggesting that America should be the one to do it. As far as Venezuela is concerned, he also said he “wouldn’t hesitate to put boots on the ground.”

Regardless of the insanity displayed at times by American foreign policy, We the People should refuse to be insane. American imperialism isn’t just morally wrong or even illegal; it’s stupid. It’s one of America’s most dangerous missteps. At its worst, it’s a threat to the world.

That the Venezuelan people have suffered greatly under Maduro is indisputable, and I understand the joy so many of them feel at his overthrow. Clearly he was an evil dictator and an illegitimate leader. But so was Saddam Hussein. America’s invasion of Iraq, however, led to the deaths of a million of its citizens.

At the time of the Iraq War, I was hosting a Sirius XM radio show. Speaking by phone to a woman in Iraq, she said something I will never forget. “We knew we had a devil on our hands. We were waiting for the day when we could get rid of him and his sons. And we were plotting. But what you Americans have done is delivered so many devils, we’ll never be able to be rid of them.” We can feel horrible for the plight of the Venezuelan people and still not assume that America invading their country is the ultimate solution to their problem or even an end to their misery. On that point, of course, I hope that I am wrong.

Trump’s goal is not to protect liberty, neither that of the Venezuelan nor the American people. It isn’t to follow the law, but only to impose his will. And he has the extraordinary talent of convincing millions of Americans that this is all for their own good. It’s he - not the Constitution, not domestic or international law - on which they can rely for their safety and security. His administration is less an arm of legal governance, and something more like a Hollywood production limited by nothing but the President’s imagination. Except that this isn’t fiction, it’s real life. Legality, schmegality. What’s particularly chilling is how many Americans think that’s exactly how it should be.

The President went to great lengths in today’s press conference to exalt America’s military, which displayed extraordinary precision and military excellence last night. General Dan Caine noted that “This was an audacious operation that only the United States could do. It required the utmost of precision and integration within our joint force. And the word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission.” Yeah, so was the invasion of Baghdad and we all know how that turned out. He said “This mission was meticulously planned, drawing lessons from decades of missions over the last many years.” Oh really? It seems to me they’ve learned nothing.

The President reported heavy losses among Venezuelan forces seeking to protect their president, but all of America’s troops and equipment returned safely to their bases. Our military’s excellence we should not doubt, nor fail to honor and be grateful for in and of itself. But the point we all need to remember is that this wasn’t the D-Day invasion. We weren’t protecting liberty. We were simply stealing oil.