He has done what he has been itching to do for some time, and that is have his own war. Given his dropping popularity and troubles at home, he has done what American president have frequently done in such situations and that is attack a smaller country, which tends to rally the jingoists, of whom there are many in this country, around the president. These people do not care about international law or committing war crimes.
This attack should be roundly and instantly condemned by everyone.
The only surprise is that this happened now than 48 hours after the Epstein files release.
Anyone who didn’t see this coming should be browsing prospectuses for assisted living.
This was the appalling headline that I woke up to this morning.
I guess we will see how this war ends.
Random thoughts.
.1. Maduro and the Venezuelan army didn’t demonstrate any competence or intelligence here.
It was telegraphed well in advance, that we were going to attack Venezuela.
AFAICT, the US military just walked in and grabbed him without much trouble.
.2. Trump said today that we are going to rule over Venezuela until some time in the undefined future.
We did this in Afghanistan and Iraq and it didn’t work out well.
For some reason, foreign people don’t like being ruled in dictatorships by Americans backed up by our state of the art military forces.
.3. Are we going to be any better and any better liked than Maduro? Instead of Venezuelans stealing their oil revenues, it is going to be US companies stealing their oil revenues.
Which thieves will the Venezuelan people like the best?
.4. This is really a poke in the face for Russia and China.
These were both the few allies of Maduro and in the end, they couldn’t do much of anything to help him. Not very valuable allies here.
.5. Who is next?
There will be a next.
If I was Prime Minister Carney of Canada, I would be reinforcing my body guards and maybe moving to a Canadian military base.
Could be Cuba.
Cuba is now a falling apart basket case with a very old leadership, and can’t even keep their lights on a lot of the time.
I’m sure we could just walk in and take it over.
.6. I get nervous every time we have another war.
I knew people killed in Vietnam and two of my friends were killed in Iraq.
So, who will I lose in this one? At my age, we are sending our grandchildren off to fight.
As I said, the Pharyngula, I think this is part of the Putin-Trump “peace” plan discussions. Next is likely to be Greenland or Cuba (the other Rubio pet project) but as a Canadian, I don’t feel safe at all because we definitely are on the list of potential “acquisitions”. And China will want Taiwan very soon. Ukraine and the other potential Russian targets are more complicated due to those pesky Europeans and the NATO chart but there might be more “soft” takeovers with the far right extremist parties becoming more popular all over.
i want the us to pay for this shit so bad, but expect nothing.
In Trump’s personal emo-drama, which clearly drives his actions above all else, how can he not continue his Iran-Syria-Nigeria-Caribbean attack spree? (Just the thing to accompany his “plan” to “administer” all of Venezuela, dovetailing so smoothly…)
He today threatened both Mexico and Colombia, but that’s probably a feint so that Canada &/or Atlanta will let down their guard. Who can match such Lenin-level tactical cunning?
Anybody who can get to a demo or protest, please do so!
Trump says the US will run Venezuela for the time being and rebuild the oil infrastructure, etc. But how is he actually going to do that?
They may have kidnapped Maduro, but there is no occupying force and they are not in control of the government apparatus. Meanwhile the generals who backed Maduro are still in power along with his cronies. Just removing the top guy doesn’t mean Marco Rubio can just walk in to Caracas and start issuing executive orders. It doesn’t even mean the opposition leaders are automatically going to take control.
Really, sonof? You specifically predicted kidnapping Maduro? That exact thing? Wow, impressive if true!
Hardly. I would have though it went without saying that by “this” I meant fairly generally “direct open military action against mainland Venezuela”, not mission specifics, timings, targets and troop numbers -- I’m not in the right Whatsapp group to know that level of detail. Or am I?
@6,
exactly. Trump seems to think other countries are run by dictators too, not elected governments, and if you take one guy out, the whole thing collapses. That VP lady might not agree.
Good point.
Trump is senile.
This is what passes for thought in his mind with dementia.
It’s magical thinking. “If I say it will happen that way, it happens that way.”
He also said the new VP who is now the leader had agreed to work with the USA.
That is news to her, as he is the only one that has heard that.
FWIW, the whole idea of invading Venezuela probably isn’t even Trump’s idea. He is just a meat puppet by now.
Most observers think this was thought up by Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who hate Castro’s Cuba.
raven 2@, you’re right, we’ll see where this war goes and how many on both sides die.
But, I’m afraid that, in this case, the future may already be written.
Some Military Dictator (oh sorry, “Governor”) will be appointed and Venezuelans will live under martial law. Then comes, for the US, the hard part: the insurgency. I have read that an occupying army needs ten soliders for every insurgent to keep control, so there will be a lot of bloodshed and bombs (think IEDs, like in Iraq) and arson, many deaths, of civilians as well.
Time will drag on, perhaps a couple of decades, and finally the US will ignominiously withdraw the troops and the puppet government will collapse. Every warlord will then rush into the power vacuum, fighting it out ruthlessly to become the next power. More civilian death and suffering. An establishment of some kind of dictatorial or worse (they don’t have the Taliban there, do they?) government, and perhaps more decades until the Venezuelan people can live in peace.
The end is implicit in the beginning.
OTOH, the wild card in this particular war is Trump. When something doesn’t seem to be turning out well (think: Musk), he often quickly drops it and convinces himself that it was a success. So, perhaps.
The insurgents have one card to play that may help them shorten this: the oil companies’ installations. If enough pipelines and other infrastructure are blown up, the oil companies may not be getting what they paid Trump/Rubio/whomever for (cheap oil) and eventually write it off as a loss.
*Then* the power vacuum will happen.
Currently, there appear to be no US troops on the ground, Maduro’s VP Delcy Rodríguez has been told by Maduro’s Supreme Court to step in as Acting President while (!) Maduro is absent, and there’s no sign the Chavista regime is about to crumble, or genuflect to God-Emperor Donald. Trump has claimed she had agreed with Marco Rubio to do as she’s told, but there’s zero evidence of this and she has denounced the attack and kidnapping. I’m amused that Trump has said that María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan extreme conservative and Trump fan absurdly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, doesn’t have the support to take over: accepting the prize which rightly belonged to Trump was her mistake -- but without an actual invasion, or possibly an opportunistic military coup, Trump and Rubio couldn’t install her or any other puppet in any case. And the oil majors are most unlikely to want to pour untold $billions into resuscitating the Venezuelan oil industry even if the political conditions for that existed -- there is a lot of oil, but it’s very low quality (I’ve seen it described as sludge), and the infrastructure is decrepit. The kidnapping might even have done the Chavista elite a favour, as Maduro was exclusively concerned with staying in power and enriching his family (now, who does that remind me of?), so it gives them an outside chance of a reset. All in all, I think this will turn out to be just another short-term distraction from the Epstein files, continuing inflation, and rocketing healthcare costs -- except for those Venezuelans (apparently about 40 in total, mixture of military and civilians) murdered in the course of the attack, and their families and friends. Putin and Xi are probably pleased rather than otherwise, as it continues the destruction of international law.
At this point, I’m glad I don’t live in Venezuela, and I’ve always been glad I don’t live in the US.
Going forward, I’m really glad I don’t live in Canada. Bear in mind that the US imports a LOT of the fertiliser it uses from Canada, and last month Trump threatened tariffs on Canadian potash. To which Canadians said “yeah, go ahead”, because all they thought that means is US farmers have to pay more for something they can’t do without, because that’s how tariffs work. And a lot of those farmers are on tight budgets already, and tariffs will put them out of business and put food prices up… which Trump will blame on Canada (with some twisted justification). Won’t the Canadian potash just be replaced in the supply chain by honest to goodness good-ol-U-S-of-A produced potash? Isn’t that how tariffs are supposed to work, to encourage people to buy local? Well, that may be true, but while that may be how economics thinks it works, that isn’t how geology works. The potash is in Canada, and no amount of tariffs will put reserves under the ground in e.g. Kansas.
In 2025, people laughed at the idea Trump would buy/invade Greenland and annex bits of Canada, and the Canadian potash producers were probably feeling pretty smug.
Still laughing? Still smug?
Late Wednesday, December 31st, a transcript of Jack Smith’s Dec. 17th testimony before the House Judiciary Committee was released by Republicans on the committee. Jack Smith testified that Trump had engaged in a criminal scheme to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and that Trump had knowingly taken the classified files to Mar a Lago and hid them from the FBI and courts several times.
The Epstein files were to have been completely released by Jan 3rd. Trump, himself, signed that law into being.
No wonder Trump felt he had to start a war on Jan 2. He distracts people when the news about him is too bad.