The Tragedy of Venezuela is the Tragedy of the US
May 2, 2019
Trump doesn't give a farthing about Venezuela and is letting his underlings
let slip the dogs of war in so long as it secures Florida's electoral votes
for Trump 2020, says Lawrence Wilkerson.
By Lawrence Wilkerson
Anti-War.com
Knowing what I know about my own administration's attempt to unseat
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, I was not surprised when the
effort was recently renewed by the Trump Administration, particularly when
such arch-defenders of Latin American rights as Elliott Abrams, Marco Rubio,
and Rick Scott - not to mention John Bolton - began to appear on the White
House payroll.
Knowing as well that Trump did not give a farthing for what happened in
Venezuela but was concentrated on what he is always focused on, domestic
politics, I knew these underlings would be allowed to cry havoc and let slip
the dogs of war in Venezuela so long as doing it secured Florida's electoral
votes for Trump in 2020.
What I did not know - but looking back to 2002, should have - is how utterly
incompetent the CIA would be in pulling off the "soft coup d'etat" that its
leaders promised Trump. The events of the past 48 hours have demonstrated
that incompetence markedly, as well as the real motivations of Trump's
lackeys on Venezuela, from the shrimp-lusting-after-Cuba Marco Rubio to the
bombastic former governor of Florida Rick Scott, to the pardoned criminal
Abrams, to the supine and totally incompetent Juan Guaido and his backer,
Leopoldo Lopez in Caracas. What a crew the GOP can muster!
And they just might have let slip the dogs of war.
And they let them slip into a potentially first-class disaster - just like
Somalia in 1992, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2012, Afghanistan
today and yesterday, and on and on.
Venezuelan military. (Telesur)
I know the Venezuelan military; I've trained some of them. They are not your
usual "I want to shower after meeting them" crowd, as I would describe for
instance the Honduran military. Instead, they are reasonably professional,
reasonably aware of Venezuela's historical commitment to democracy, and
reasonably competent at their day jobs. They are proud of the fact that they
are not Panama, i.e., a country into which the U.S. can send paratroopers
overnight, kill several thousands, grab a narco-trafficker, and leave.
The majority of them, if the U.S. military arrives in Venezuela, will take
to the hills - very formidable hills, with jungle-like backdrops - and they
will harass, kill, take prisoner from time to time, and generally hold out
forever or until the "gringos" leave. We might remember how the North
Vietnamese and the Taliban accomplished this; well, so will the Venezuelans.
Were I looking down from Mars and with no dog in this fight, I might say
that it would be suitable comeuppance for the sheer stupidity of the Trump
gang. One might shout loudly as the quagmire develops, "Get elected now, Mr.
Reality-TV man!"
But the bloodshed in Venezuela - military and civilian - and the dead and
wounded U.S. Marines and soldiers will afford this old soldier no comfort at
all. Instead such an outcome will make me regret even more profoundly our
Founding Fathers' grievous error in creating the Electoral College because
they feared the demos in democracy.
Keep going, Trumpster. You'll founder this ship of state soon enough.
This article was reprinted with the permission of the author.
