DARK CLOUDS OVER VENEZUELA

The next Vietnam or Iraq could be lurking in the Caribbean…

The Port of Spain, seven miles from the coast of Venezuela. Photo by Joe Readle

One of the most tragic aspects of American politics is its continual focus on short term gain and short term arguments. It makes us among other things extremely vulnerable to political propaganda.

It was true in Vietnam, scaring people about a Communist takeover of Southeast Asia. It was true in Iraq, scaring people with a bogus lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Today it’s happening with Venezuela. You can almost hear Trump asking, “What do you think I should tell people?” Someone in his administration responds, “Oh, tell them it’s about drugs! Tell them we’re killing drug dealers!” Their assumption is that we would buy that, and too many people do.

Very few drugs come into the United States from Venezuela - no fentanyl at all, by the way. Also, those boats they’ve been bombing would have to make something like five stops in order to deposit drugs in the United States. Venezuela is a transit stop, not a manufacturing site. This has nothing to do with drugs.

It has to do with oil, and also rare earth minerals. It has to do with investment opportunities in Venezuela for US corporations, if only they can get Maduro out of the way. Maduro isn’t a good guy, it’s true, but neither are the leaders of many countries in the world. That doesn’t give us permission to invade them. It’s not a new pattern for the United States to do it anyway, unfortunately, particularly in Latin America. It’s a reprisal of one of the darkest aspects US foreign policy over the last 70 years. Trump is a hawk not a dove, and little more than a mouthpiece for US corporate interests.

For many Americans, Venezuela seems remote. But don’t kid yourself, Latin America is right beneath us on the map. If we allow the Trump administration to start a chain of violent conflict in Latin America - and clearly they’re itching to - then catastrophe could be right around the corner. This is not about the United States fighting Latin America, by the way. It’s about the United States competing with China for influence in that region.

None of this is very good news. And the only antidote to their shenanigans is our being aware. As I said, do not let them fool you. This has nothing to do with drugs.

There’s nothing even remotely normal about a President nonchalantly telling us he’s “sort of made up his mind” about dragging America into yet another military quagmire. Much less one so relatively close to home. Fighting drugs? Makes no sense! Regime change? Again? Congress hasn’t approved? He doesn’t care.

So here we are, so obsessed by the Epstein scandal (not that we shouldn’t be) while something potentially calamitous is gearing up to take place South of our border. According to NPR, “The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will arrive in the northern Caribbean on Sunday as tensions with Venezuela grow… The carrier will join 15,000 service members, including 2,000 Marines aboard an amphibious assault ship.”

By the way, Venezuela’s main allies are Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran. Just sayin’….

Former President George Bush still felt the need to explain his invasion of Iraq to Congress, even though he was lying! President Trump feels no such responsibility. He sees the military as his personal toy and he treats it that way. Whether he’s deploying it to an American city, or to a South American coastline, it’s whatever and wherever he damn well pleases. As he keeps telling us, “I’m allowed to.” Congress allows him to. The Supreme Court allows him to.

It remains to be seen whether we will.

Part of our problem is lack of an organized anti-war movement in the United States. Peace is treated almost like a quaint conversation among policy makers, NGO’s and media alike. And not only is the entrenchment of the military-industrial complex a fait accompli. Its power has been exponentially multiplied over the last few years as Big Tech has joined the arms industry in discovering war is good business.

MAGA has been adamant that America should stay out of foreign entanglements. Yet now, with a real threat of U.S. military intervention in another country, Senator Rand Paul is the lone Republican voice passionately sounding the alarm. Senator Lindsay Graham is very happy with what’s happening there, saying he’s delighted that “we’re killing all the right people.”

On the Left there is a focus on ending a war, to be sure, yet only one war gets all the attention. Trump’s Gaza peace plan is tenuous at best, and continued focus on Palestinian justice is critical. But the Pro-Palestine movement is specifically geared to addressing one particular situation. There is no larger, organized peace movement on the Left.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine led an effort in the Senate to block Trump’s unilateral military action in Venezuela. Kaine argued that the administration’s legal rationale for the boat strikes rests on an expansive view of presidential powers “that has no support in the Constitution” and would be “extremely flimsy” if applied to Venezuela. The measure was voted down along party lines by a vote of 51 to 49, however, as Congressional Republicans continue the self-sabotaging surrender of their own authority to the President.

It’s hard to overstate the lack of moral clarity in almost every corner of American politics today. People’s attention seems limited to their particular silos. And if a situation arises that doesn’t fit into one, then no matter how dangerous it is it can slip by almost unnoticed. The prospect of massive death and destruction just a few miles from the United States, instigated by reckless sociopaths who never in a million years would send their own children to die in this mess, is currently being met with a huge ho hum.

One of the issues, of course, is that America’s war machine proffers a myth, disproven repeatedly from Vietnam to Iraq, that “we’ll just go in and clean things up. It will be quick.” People are lulled into believing, once again, that America’s military dominance is to be unquestioned. Note to all thinking people: We did not “win” in Vietnam. Nor did we “win” in Iraq. If anything, we spread devastation and ruin on a massive scale that in retrospect was for nothing. Such military misadventures have been ethical, military and political failures, recognized ultimately as exactly that yet met with no more official remorse than “Oops, yeah maybe we shouldn’t have done that.” And even that’s a cover, see. To the multi-trillion dollar interests that back America’s war machine, what we’ve done - and what we plan to do - spells nothing but profitability.

God help us when our karma comes due.

We are sleepwalking into a situation that could erupt into an extraordinary horror, and Pete Hegseth leading the charge makes the situation that much more perilous. It’s extremely disappointing to see how Secretary of State Marco Rubio lost his soul along the way. And President Trump’s command of the U.S. armed forces looks ever more like a brain-addled king telling full force military personnel to go anywhere and everywhere, depending on what suits him on any given day.

So it’s up to us now. We the People must spread the word, using whatever platforms we have to make our fellow citizens understand the danger. Post articles and express your own opinions. Call the Congressional switchboard at 202 224-3121 to tell your Senators and Reps you do not want the US to take military action in Venezuela!

At a time when the government has so lost its way, we must not lose ours.