When is the world gonna sanction the US as hard as they’ve done Russia?
Petition to refer to this and all upcoming US wars of imperialism as “special military operations” when talking to libs, just so it will get under their skin by highlighting their opportunistic, selective antiwar and anti-“dictatorship” political posturing.
I’ve seen American chuds argue in the past that the US has never lost a war (this was a long time ago, before Afghanistan and Iraq) because Vietnam wasn’t a war, it was a ”military operation”.
Same here. They still do it, and the even claim that it was a “withdrawal” from Vietnam after achieving their goals (??) and not a defeat as well.
They do something similar for Afghanistan too.
When someone is that deep in the trashcan of ideology I don’t think there’s any reasoning with them tbh. Best to just close the lid and walk away. We can talk about what objectives were achieved in these wars, sure, but if you want me to agree with you that these wars were victories for the US then I’m afraid I’m just not capable of that level of suspension of disbelief.
Question to anyone who know military stuff:
Is the time between the start of the attack and this tweet enough for spec-ops (or whoever they could have sent) to go in, capture the freaking president of the country, and escape? Or is the timeline as suspiciously tight as I suspect it is?
It’s very tight but not inconceivable.
In a country in a region like South America, where the School of the Americas has functioned for the best part of a century, with plenty of comprador governments and counterrevolutionary cells that operate that are essentially on the US payroll in one way or another, it’s quite possible that the US could have activated a plan to kidnap Maduro and it could have been executed within the span of hours.
This is America’s backyard, like it or not, and the Monroe Doctrine has set them up to be most effective in this region due to many reasons; it’s not Iraq or Syria which is much more difficult to penetrate with special forces and to glean intel.
Trump talks shit a lot of the time but it would be an immense public embarrassment for his administration if he falsely claimed that he had kidnapped Maduro so I’m very much inclined to believe this on the face of it, without any evidence to support or dispute the claim.
Time will tell.
Also, the Venezuelan opposition has functioned with help from the US uninterruptedly for the better part of 20 years, at different levels of visibility. But this means there’s always been a healthy cadre of gusanos itching to take over and murder some communists. It would be naive to think that they don’t have USA/Colombia-trained armed cells waiting to be activated for moments like this.
Let’s remember they managed to stage a coup and take power briefly during Chavez’s time.
Very much agreed. I actually put a link to the documentary covering this chapter of Venezuelan history in case anyone isn’t aware of it in a top level comment just a moment ago so it’s good to see others discussing it too. This moment in time has been in the pipeline for over two decades (and honestly it’s really frustrating that the left and the anti-war movement in the west as seemingly been caught with its pants down yet again, despite having more time to prepare for this than a good proportion of people in these movements have been alive for. John Pilger would have some words about this, if he was still around.)
I wonder if they used a cell of Venezuelan gusano expats to conduct this operation, just like they have done with Cuba over the decades? I wouldn’t be surprised and when it comes to matters of imperialism you can accuse the US government of all sorts of things, including the most heinous of crimes, but you cannot accuse them of originality.
The current DoD leadership seems to really yearn for the times where US hegemony was maintained by Marine incursions and gunboats, so I wouldn’t be surprised they’re rehashing old strategies.
Even so, I can’t help but think there’s a bit of theatricality to all this. They needed US boots on the ground to claim the credit, no matter who did the work, and also to deflect scrutiny of internal elements, allowing them to lay low in wait for another strike, if necessary.
Besides, if it worked in so many places, why change it now?
Exactly.
I don’t want to downplay the fuckery that this is and how awful things are getting for Venezuelans but it feels like this is an indication of where the US economy is at, since this is the classic playbook for distraction from economic woes and to do yet-another wealth transfer from the public purse to the M-I complex while driving up the price of oil at least temporarily and gaining access to vast mineral wealth in the longer term.
I’m reading it as a troubling development for the geopolitical situation around the world because the messier the US economy gets, the more it will spill out onto other countries. I was hoping for the US to get another bloody nose, for all the obvious reasons but also because it might make them think twice about starting shit on with Iran again.
But that’s very idealistic of me. After all, you cannot reason with a rabid dog - there’s only one way of dealing with it.
In my mind the largest question is whether the US is going to commit to full occupation, which is unpopular with even the right wing, unless it’s framed as an explicitly colonial project (which is far more costly to maintain), or is the US going to use limited shows of force targeted to eliminate the top layers of the PSUV and keep the base happy by jingling the MIC keys in front of them, later trusting the gusanos to be good compradores once they seize power.
Both are distractions from the impending doom of the AI bubble and economic catastrophe, but they serve different goals with different levels of investment. If the US squeezes outside its borders, it would have to relax inside with the same resources, leaving itself open to disruption at home. But it also needs the immediate kind of resource transfers that only colonial occupation could bring to keep propping up the US economy and defer the other economic shoe from dropping for long enough that it is someone else’s problem.
It is also a troubling geopolitical development in the sense that now the threat of forced removal of a Latin American head of state is on the table, its governments will have to fall in line. This will inevitably mean that American capital will tighten its grip on latam and make the economies of the region even more interconnected and dependent. Worsening the effects of any nosebleeds the US will have.
Agreed on all points. You laid it all out really well here.
My guess is a puppet comprador government for Venezuela if things go to plan for the US, with all the major oil contracts going to US companies (or a privatization and American buy up of the Venezuelan nationalized oil industry, more than likely.)
This is very much in line with what the US has been signalling with foreign policy it has been withdrawing from its NATO commitments and where it has indicated that it will be less involved in the world, strongly implying a return to the Monroe Doctrine era. But there are so many moving parts and they are all moving so quickly that it’s hard to get a good read on what will happen next.
I would expect that the US won’t want to get bogged down in Venezuela, militarily or through administration, because Iran is the next target.
Trump talks shit a lot of the time but it would be an immense public embarrassment for his administration if he falsely claimed that he had kidnapped Maduro so I’m very much inclined to believe this on the face of it, without any evidence to support or dispute the claim.
I thought of that after I posted this comment, and yea, that would be a big lie to tell even for him.The question, though, is how badly will this affect Venezuelan resistance? Hopefully that doesn’t cripples the socialists for one, I’m concerned about how this might help comprador reactionary and traitor forces. Also, how well can they defend themselves, on one hand having aircrafts over the capital isn’t a supremely good look for the country’s air defense capability, on the other hand Caracas is basically right on the coast so aircrafts coming from the sea would probably (I assume) reach it very shortly after detection making it easier to get shots in before a response can be scrambled. How far in the territory can American aircrafts go before they’re in serious trouble?
The question, though, is how badly will this affect Venezuelan resistance?
Very hard to tell and I think it’s going to be largely contingent on the Venezuelan military response. The colectivos are armed and trained but they are militias and they aren’t likely to be able to resist in a significant way without Venezuelan military support, especially if the military turns on them.
If it was a full-blown Afghanistan style occupation then the colectivos could be expected to be very useful as an insurgent force but I don’t think this one is a fight they are big enough to take on so as it stands currently, I think the vast majority of the resistance would come from the Venezuelan military, which appears not to have fired a single shot.
How far in the territory can American aircrafts go before they’re in serious trouble?
Honestly, I’m not a military guy I’m a geopolitics girlie so I can’t say anything authoritatively in this respect but it’s hard to imagine a Venezuelan military with air defence capabilities enough to resist the US. If they went all-in on drones and prepared for a pitched battle then it’s possible that there would be strong resistance but I don’t know how realistic that would have been.
Venezuela isn’t renowned for its military capacity and their military, at least historically, has a tendency towards disloyalty so I’m not that hopeful about their capacity to pose much resistance at this stage.
The precedent is sent. Abducting, killing, striking heads of state is now on the table. Make of that what you will, world.
Please Xi… please
China has all but said that they’re going to let the US treat South America as its backyard. I don’t expect any help or solidarity from them.
The only hope was Russia coming through for Venezuela but I wasn’t convinced that this was anything more than bluster or geopolitical jockeying.
Who knows if there was actually any moves to advance this and, even if it did have enough time to get implemented, what use would it have been if the Venezuelan military had (apparently) been bought off or ordered to stand down by a seditious general or two? I mean, it’s not like it would have been the first time for the Venezuelan military to betray the government and the people.
Dark times. I hope the fumble this one just like they did some two decades ago with Chavez but I don’t have high hopes.
Infinite death to AmeriKKKas forever
Not long until the Venezuelan taliban emerge from the caves and stab the occupiers in the throat. At least that’s what I hope for. An insurgency. I don’t care who funds it. I’m a full-blown sociopath at this point and Trump must pay. I hope his supporters protest. If I was in the US right now I’d be visiting all the Trump supporters in their 20s and 30s and I’d tell them to act now. Protest at the White House and call for Trump to be removed.
I hope his supporters protest. If I was in the US right now I’d be visiting all the Trump supporters in their 20s and 30s and I’d tell them to act now. Protest at the White House and call for Trump to be removed.
Yeah, I’m sure this is the last straw for them, they’ll definitely turn on him, Drumpf is finished!
In any case, this will make it much easier for china and russia to justify their plans. This isn’t a victory for trump and especially not for America.
The US just bombed a country and (supposedly) kidnapped its leader and wife.
You: What about China and Russia tho?
This is part of a big power competition and that’s the only way to see it. But there will be idiots who think that Trump is great. He’s going to stop the drugs and election fraud by invading venezuela. Wait a few days and see what ridiculous opinions emerge. Americans won’t benefit from this and will lose on the long run. Rules based order my ass.
Rules based order my ass.
When the US talks of a rules based order they mean “we make the rules and you take the orders.”
