America's Gun-boat Diplomacy (aka 'Piracy' and 'kidnapping')
"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves, Britons never, never, never will be slaves". The song is still sung with gusto and much flag-waving at the British Proms, but now with an element of self-mockery. Britons, despite owning two hellishly expensive 'Air-craft Carriers', know the words are vacuous and they no longer 'rule the waves' - or virtually anything else.
As to "Never, never shall be slaves", written by James Thompson to the music of Thomas Arne in 1740, the irony of owning and trading in the slavery of others, was clearly lost on them. Nor in the present age is the social, economic or political slavery, in which we find ourselves, fully appreciated. Leaving aside all the other iterations, literal slavery has apparently never ensnared more people than today.
The British Empire, that at its height, ruled perhaps a third of the world's land surface and profited hugely by it, was progressively dismantled from two ruinous European wars and subsequent Indian sub-continent secession from 1948 onwards. The failure of Suez adventure in 1956, a conspiracy by Britain, France and the nascent Israeli state, to check the independence of Egypt under President Nasser, was the final nail.
The British Empire, like all those that had preceded it, in China, in Babylon, in Assyria, in Egypt, in Rome, and innumerable others, recorded and unrecorded, has had its 'rise and fall'. We are reminded of Shelley's immortal lines, first published in 1818, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare."
If Empires, however great and powerful are transient, even more so Emperors, yet they seem immune to its lesson. The United States of America and its President Trump, have now assumed the role Britain once held, yet far more arrogantly and destructively it could be argued. It has taken on the mantle of unilateral arbiter of what is lawful or necessary. It has for the last century, spent a disproportion amount of its wealth on arms and military expenditure and has seldom not been engaged in war with someone, somewhere.
It has dominated Europe and South America and extended its influence and bases world wide, but never before recent times has it so overtly threatened its ostensible allies and neighbours or undermined the post-1948 United Nations world order.
How much this is down to the personal, highly egotistial, world view of President Trump, or of the state institutions is debateable, but what is now clear is that it regards 'National Sovereignty' as transactionable concept, dependent only on its own arbitary definition. The natural resources of other states are there to be abstracted and used at its whim. There can be no doubt that what makes one country the richer, makes the other country and its population the poorer.
In the case of Venezuela, Trump has adopted Palmerston's policy of 'gunboat diplomacy'. As usual, on the pretext of fighting drug crime. It has bombed boats and people on international waters and hijacked oil tankers and engaged in extrajudicial - aka 'murdered - at least 150 people, maybe more, given the intensity of the operation to capture President Maduro.
Google AI Mode currently has this:
- Operation Absolute Resolve (January 3, 2026): At least 40 people, including both military personnel and civilians, were killed during the large-scale U.S. military operation to capture Maduro. Strikes targeted Caracas and the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. Specific reported casualties include an 80-year-old woman, Rosa González, killed when a strike hit an apartment complex in Catia La Mar.
- Naval Strikes on Vessels (September – December 2025): Between 110 and 115 people were killed in more than 30 U.S. airstrikes targeting what the administration described as "drug-smuggling" boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The first of these strikes occurred on September 2, 2025, killing 11 people.
But whatever the Trump rationale or excuses, it is clear the real reason for the incursion is one of control of the huge oil assets of that country, by replacing its government with one more amenable to the United States. It is essentially the imposition of a colonialist philosophy and practice, for blatant financial benefit. It is disinterested in the welfare of people, only in the accretion of power and money.
I am sure Palmerston would be proud of Trump and a country with largely British and European roots, but the political leadership of other countries - and Empires - may not be so sanguine. (TTV)
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Shades of Noriega. Same date - different time frame. Laurie Garrett does a great job of considering all the angles. |
If you break it, you own it
With no clear rationale or plan for what comes next, President Donald Trump removes Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and declares America will now run the country and extract its oil.
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Operation Absolute Resolve was triggered at 10:56 pm last night by direct order of President Donald Trump, according to General Dan Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was, Caine told reporters this morning at Mar-a-Lago, an “apprehension capture mission” targeting President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. At the 10:56 order some 150 aircraft departed 20 U.S. bases and naval positions, descending upon Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.
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With no loss of American lives or equipment, the operation was hailed by President Trump as “one of the greatest” success stories in U.S. military history.
Maduro and Flores are now on board the U.S. Iwo Jima in the Caribbean, bound for New York City, where the Venezuelans will be imprisoned and tried.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred this morning in the Mar-a-Lago press conference to the operation as “extraction of indicted” personnel. The rationale for the military action, Rubio insisted, was sound, focused on bringing an indicted criminal to U.S. justice. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice in American courts on American soil.”
President Trump told reporters this morning that “America can exercise our will effectively anywhere, at any time.” He repeatedly referred to the Venezuelan action as a warning to leaders throughout the world that crossing U.S. interests will put them in conflict with “the greatest military force in the world.”
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Foreign press, from India to Turkey, Nigeria to Brazil, immediately drew parallels between Operation Absolute Resolve and the 1989 capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, carried out by order of President George HW Bush. It is not intended to be a flattering analogy – rather, indication of Yankee over-reach in Latin America.
Noriega was indicted in 1988 in federal courts in Florida on charges of racketeering and drug smuggling, and on money laundering charges in France. Unlike last night’s operation in Caracas, the U.S. military invasion of Panama was a bloody conflict pitting 27,000 U.S. combatants against 16,000 Panamanian defense military, killing 23 Americans and a much-debated number of Panamanian soldiers and civilians – estimates still in 2026 range between 500 and 3,000 Panamanian dead. “Pineapple Face,” as Noriega was called by his opponents, took refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City, and his loyalists continued fighting for days until the Catholic See agreed to hand the military leader over to U.S. personnel. Noriega died of a brain tumor in 2017 in a Panama City hospital, after serving 27 years in prisons in the U.S., France and Panama.
Today, JFK International Airport issued an early Saturday morning security alert, warning passengers that all flights to and from the Caribbean to New York City were either cancelled, or will be delayed for many hours, due to dangerous military activities in the region. Maduro and Flores will be brought to New York City, to stand trial in the federal Southern District Court in Manhattan. As is now customary with high value prisoners awaiting trial, the Venezuelans are likely to be held in the Brooklyn Federal Court Building, located at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, which is considered the most secure, virtually bomb-proof structure in the United States. Designed under orders from President Bill Clinton following the deadly 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the Brooklyn structure was meant to be a prototype “bomb-proof” structure for all federal courthouses. Following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center construction of the building halted, the frailties of the WTC buildings and Pentagon damaged in 2001 were studied, and modifications were made. President George W. Bush ordered in 2002 that the structure have a roof capable of withstanding a one megaton bomb, anthrax or chemical weapons spread, and parking garage car-bombs. The building is three structures, one inside another, descending many stories below street level. Each building has its own ventilation system, stairs and elevators.
The Maduros may be initially detained in “The Tombs” – the colloquial name of the Manhattan Detention Complex of buildings located between Chinatown and the Financial District. Built in 1735 as Bridewell Prison, modernized in the nearly three centuries since, The Tombs were denounced in 1842 by Charles Dickens: “Such indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells, would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world!”
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Even in the 1960s The Tombs ranked as one of the worst city jails in the USA. In 2001 Mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered The Tombs named after his Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik – a moniker removed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Kerik pled guilty to corruption charges in 2006. Most of the original buildings that comprised The Tombs were demolished in 2024 to make way for more modern, humane facilities – which have not yet been constructed.
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Finally, the Maduros could end up in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. This grim, gray concrete facility is notorious for having neither heat in the winter, nor air-conditioning in summer. Located close to the New York Harbor waterfront, MDC-Brooklyn is frequently condemned as “inhumane” because summer temperatures inside cells exceed 100 degrees F, and winter can drop below freezing. In 2019 the prison under the first Trump Administration famously shut down all heat, leading to outcry from both prisoners and their families. On frequent bike rides along the outside of the prison that winter I witnessed hundreds of families and friends standing on the street, shouting greetings and calls for courage to their loved ones inside. Prisoners banged on their windows, demanding heat amid a Polar Vortex Arctic event that drove wind chills as low as -15 degrees F. Members of Congress and Senator Chuck Schumer were denied entry to inspect the facilities which, according to attorneys for the prisoners, offered life-threatening Arctic cold with temperatures as low as 10 degrees. If jailed in MDC-Brooklyn – which houses both male and female prisoners – the Maduros would shiver in temperatures that are today 20 degrees.
At around 4:30 pm a plane carrying the Maduros and a Delta Team landed at Stewart Air National Guard base, located in Newburgh, in Upstate New York, where Maduro and Flores underwent a series of legally required preliminary processing steps, such as customs and immigration intake, fingerprinting and identity confirmation. According to both The New York Times and CNN, the Trump Administration has selected MDC-Brooklyn as the couple’s accommodations for tonight.
WHY DID THIS HAPPEN
Tension between the United States and Venezuela dates to 1999, when military officer Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias seized power, installing the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in power. Chavez formed a close alliance with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, providing Cuba with nearly-free petrochemicals and gasoline in exchange for Cuban doctors, dentists, schoolteachers and engineers. With the exception of a 47-hour-long coup effort in 2002, Chavez held power until his death due to cancer in 2013, and was elected four times, albeit in elections that saw opponents facing prison and death threats. He commanded tremendous loyalty from the rank-and-file of Venezuela’s military, and was immensely popular among the country’s poor, who bitterly resented the vast wealth gap and dire poverty created by the petrostate oligarchy.
Prior to Chavez’s seizure of power, more than half the population, most of them descended from African slaves, indigenous Amazonian people or mixed-race ancestry, lived in acute poverty, while a handful of powerful, European-descendant families controlled hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of wealth derived from the nation’s vast oil and gas reserves, and communications and media enterprises that spanned Latin America.
Though Chavez created social welfare programs that proved wildly popular with the masses, he also replaced the old, all-white elite with a more racially diverse new elite that Venezuelan journalist Juan Carlos Zapata labelled an “oligarchy” and bolibourgeoisie or bolichicos – people who became rich under the protection of Chávez and, after his death, Nicolas Maduro’s government through corruption and political favors. That new elite became all-powerful, garnering staggering wealth from the country’s fossil fuel income and backing an increasingly brutal Maduro regime.
Both the Obama and Biden Administrations tried to bring down the Maduro elite through sanctions on the country’s oil industry, but the net impact of petrostate corruption coupled with sanctions regimes imposed by nations all over the world was an economy that barely functions for average citizens. Even for the elite, the country’s dependence on a single source of wealth – oil – left it acutely vulnerable to global fluxes in petroleum prices. In 2014 oil sold internationally for $100/barrel and the Maduro elite enjoyed phenomenal wealth. But two years later oil fell to $30/barrel, and the government effectively went into bankruptcy, reducing the scope of all public programs including healthcare, education and agriculture. Between 2014 and 2021 the nation’s GDP plummeted 75% and its debt burden – chiefly owed to China and Russia – soared to over $150 billion. By 2018 inflation for basic goods, such as milk, eggs and clothing, skyrocketed an astonishing 130,000%, and even amid modest improvements in the economic picture due to European purchases of Venezuelan oil, in 2023 inflation held at 190%.
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Following Maduro’s ascension to power in 2014 some 8 million people left the country, most fleeing to nearby Latin American nations (2.9 million to Colombia, for example, and 1.5 million to Peru), but about 300,000 making the harrowing journey through Central America and Mexico into the United States by 2020. In 2014 the population of Venezuela was 30.2 million; by 2024 it was 26 million, despite having one of the highest birth rates on the continent.
Meanwhile, inside the United States both political parties have opposed the legitimacy of the Maduro regime, but never evidenced consistent policies regarding opposition parties, immigrants, political asylum claims, or charges of drug smuggling by the country’s elite. All such claims have been used by the Trump Administration, including in today’s press conference, to justify actions against Venezuelan oil companies, boats targeted recently in the Caribbean, and today’s military action against Caracas.
OIL, OIL, OIL
In 1922 Royal Dutch Shell geologists struck oil near Lake Maracaibo in northwest Venezuela. Within two decades an “Oil Rush” unfolded with more than 100 companies – mostly, American and European – descending upon what has proven to be the largest petroleum reserve on the planet. The Maracaibo Basin Reserve spans an enormous region, from Venezuela’s central mountain range, under all of Lake Maracaibo, and into the Gulf of Venezuela including most of the nation’s territorial waters. Formed when a 9-mile-long asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico near Yucatan, the blast incinerating some 80% of all life forms on Earth 66 million years ago in the K-T Extinction, including all dinosaurs. The energy released by the asteroid collision is estimated to be the equivalent of 4.5 billion Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.
The heat, compression pressure and mass flora and fauna deaths produced a global carbon event, reducing complex lifeforms to their elemental components, and turning what is now the Maracaibo Basin into a gigantic subterranean lake of carbon in the forms of oil, tar and gas: fossil fuels. Today, Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin holds about 17% of Earth’s petroleum.
At peak production, using then-state-of-the-art extraction and refining equipment, Venezuela sold about 7% of world oil annually in the 1970s. Decades of corruption by successive oligarchies drained funds from the industry, decreasing its extraction capacity, and in 2025 less than 1% of global petroleum came from Venezuela.
In 2006 and 2007 Hugo Chavez issued a series of edicts that stripped private foreign companies of access and control of all petrochemical fields in Venezuela. Only corporations that were willing to yield 60% of revenues to Venezuela by giving the country’s companies majority stakeholder positions in local operations were allowed to remain. In 2009 even those companies were ejected from the country in a militarily enforced mass nationalization. The Obama Administration condemned the nationalizations, carried out, according to the President, by “ignoramus” Chavez, a “clown.” But the only actions taken by Obama were limited additional sanctions on Venezuelan oil and goods. Rhetorical wars of words bounced between Caracas and Washington for years.
The announced intent of these nationalization actions – which drew widespread praise from progressives and the Left worldwide – was to generate revenues that would benefit the Venezuelan poor, paying for social services, housing, food production and healthcare. While there may have been some benefits for the poor prior to Chavez’s cancer death, the Maduro era after 2014 ushered mass kleptomania among his elite.
TRUMP’S AGENDA
Donald Trump ran for office twice, drawing heavily for support from wealthy Venezuelan expatriates and their Cuban American sympathizers. Denouncing Venezuela as “communist” Trump the campaigner consistently promised voters with ties to Central and Latin America that he would bring down the regime.
Since taking office in January 2025 Trump’s rhetoric has shifted. He has made no mention of democracy in Venezuela, election fraud, assassinations and torture of Maduro opponents, or any other issue relevant to freedom for the country’s people. In hopes of ejecting most of the 300,000 Venezuelans that have immigrated to America, he has described them as criminals, drug dealers, even terrorists. ICE has targeted neighborhoods in Florida, New Jersey and New York that are rife with Venezuelans.
Trump has tried repeatedly to link the Maduro regime to America’s opioid crisis, even claiming that the Venezuelan leader has personally profited from fentanyl trade. There is no evidence for these claims, and in today’s press conference Trump switched from opioid rhetoric to insisting Maduro and his elite profit from cocaine. Regardless of what drug is alleged, Trump has insisted that stopping the “killing of Americans” through drug smuggling justifies bombing at least 30 boats in Caribbean waters over the last four months. On December 15th the President issued an Executive Order designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. While the EO does not mention Venezuela, it has been cited by Republicans as reason for continued attacks on the country’s boats. Three days ago the CIA, under direct orders from Trump, attacked a Venezuelan dock, citing the EO and claims of drug smuggling as justification. In a press conference Trump bragged that drug smuggling by sea, into the U.S., “are down 94%,” offering no source for the figure or comparator (94% compared to what, when?).
In today’s unfolding events it has been the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that has been seen escorting and processing Maduro and Flores, underscoring claims that all White House-ordered activities are focused on drug smuggling.
But in the one-hour press conference from Mar-a-Lago today Trump said little about drugs, communism, and not a word about the liberties and freedoms of the Venezuelan people.
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It was all about oil.
Reading from approved and crafted text, Trump said that American oil companies will enter Venezuela and spend billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s oil infrastructure, signaling a major push to revive production and rebuild the energy sector, “spending billions of dollars, reviving the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
Following seizure of 1.9 million barrels of Venezuelan oil from ships boarded by U.S. military personnel on December 10th Trump was asked in a press conference what he will do with the oil. “We’re going to keep it,” he answered, grinning. On Christmas Eve Trump added, “Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it. Maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserves. We’re keeping the ships also.”
Today he said, “We’re going to run the country until such a time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure – the oil infrastructure – and start making money for the country.”
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“A lot of money is coming out of the ground,” Trump continued. “We’re going to get reimbursed for all of that. We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend…We’ll rebuild Venezuelan oil industry with American talent, drive and skill. And the socialist regime stole it from us, through previous [U.S.] administrations, and stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. Very importantly, the embargo on Venezuelan oil remains in full effect, the American armada remains poised in position and the United States retains all military options until United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied.”
Bloomberg News is unequivocal – this entire attack and removal of the Maduros is about oil. The Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, according to new geology findings, contains one TRILLION barrels of oil – total worldwide consumption of oil to date is 1.5 trillion barrels. Chevron never left Venezuela, despite nationalization, and currently pumps a quarter of the country’s annual oil yield and is poised to fulfill Trump’s vow – “we are going to run the country.”
Trump today told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.” This echoes a statement Trump made to reporters on December 17, claiming Maduro’s government, “Took it [American oil rights] away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching. But they’re not going to do that again. We want it back. They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
In fact, long before Chavez came to power President Carlos Andres Perez in 1976 created a state petroleum company and ordered foreign oil companies to collaborate with it or leave. It followed Saudi Arabian creation of Aramco, Brazil’s Petrobras and similar programs in Mexico.
Many foreign critics have accused the Trump Administration of displaying a policy of “resource imperialism.” In an interview with The Guardian Patrick Bigger of the Transition Security Project tied Trump’s opposition to alternative energy development, denial of climate change, and hunger for oil: “The administration’s global energy policy is mostly about using the threat of violence or the withholding of aid to secure the inputs for the ‘most of the above’ energy strategy,” which excludes only solar and wind.
Bigger notes that Trump’s language today regarding Venezuela mirror those he made following U.S. military action in Syria in October 2019: “We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil, and we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future,” and Exxon Mobil could lead the effort to tap the resources.
Alice Hill of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that Trump’s target is “essentially resource nationalism”, for the USA. “He sees fossil fuel dominance as key to our national power and he doesn’t care about international norms or what climate science says. That’s very unfortunate given the clear need for rapid decarbonization. This is a short-term gamble that will cost everyone a great deal. For current and future generations who will have to deal with climate change, he’s making a catastrophic mistake.”
NOW WHAT?
Two names went unmentioned in President Trump’s prepared remarks today – one got dismissed as irrelevant in response to a reporter’s question. The names are Edmundo González and María Corina Machado. On July 28, 2024 Venezuela held national elections which Maduro claimed to have one with 51.95% of the vote. But scrutiny of 85% of written ballots revealed that González was elected President, on behalf of Vente Venezuela (VV), a liberal party run by Machado. Denied the right to run for the office by Maduro’s hand-picked Supreme Court, Machado asked González to run in her stead. Nearly every nation in the world refused to recognize Maduro’s victory (with China and Russia notable exceptions), and President Joe Biden welcomed “victor” González to the White House in August 2024.
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With death threats and assassination attempts dogging Machado daily, the VV leader went underground, hiding inside the country, appearing publicly to drum up public support and disappearing before would be captors or assassins could find her. In 2024 Machado received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and in 2025 the Nobel Peace Prize.
Asked in today’s press conference about Machado’s legitimate claim to Venezuela’s presidency, Trump said and American team will run the country, because “who’s going to take over? There is nobody to take over.”
“We’re not just going to do this with Maduro and then leave, let it go to Hell. If we just left it has zero chance of ever coming back. We’ll run it properly, we’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in…and the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the people of Venezuela.”
A reporter asked, “Mr. President, why is running a country in South America about America First?”
“Well, I think it is because we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors...with stability…with energy. We have tremendous [oil] energy in that country, it’s very important that we protect that for ourselves. We need that for the world.“
“Are you aware of the location of Machado and have you been in contact with her,” a reporter asked.
“No, we haven’t. I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within – or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect of the people.”
“Is it possible the United States ends up administering the country for years,” a reporter queried.
“Well, it won’t cost us anything because that money coming out of the ground is very substantial. So, it’s not going to cost us anything. [He shrugs] Well, we want safety there. We don’t want to be surrounded by countries that are housing our enemies. We’re going to be rebuilding.”
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In response, Maria Machado posted this letter on X:
María Corina Machado’s letter to Venezuelans
Venezuelans, The time for freedom has come!
Nicolás Maduro from today will face international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against Venezuelans and against citizens of many other nations. Given his refusal to accept a negotiated solution, the United States government has fulfilled its promise to enforce the law.
The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to prevail in our country. We are going to restore order, release the political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home.
We have fought for years, we have given it our all, and it has been worth it. What was meant to happen is happening.
This is the hour of the citizens. Those of us who risked everything for democracy on June 28th. Those of us who elected Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the legitimate President of Venezuela, who must immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces by all the officers and soldiers who comprise it.
Today we are ready to assert our mandate and take power. Let us remain vigilant, active, and organized until the democratic transition is complete. A transition that needs ALL of us.
To the Venezuelans who are currently in our country, be ready to put into action what we will be communicating to you very soon through our official channels.
To Venezuelans abroad, we need you to be mobilized, engaging the governments and citizens of the world and committing them from now on to the great operation of building the new Venezuela.
In these crucial hours, receive all my strength, my confidence, and my affection. We remain vigilant and in contact.
VENEZUELA WILL BE FREE! We go hand in hand with God, until the end.
Tonight, inside Venezuela the people are quiet, lining up in supermarkets to stockpile food, hunkering down in their homes and bracing for chaos. The Trump Administration seems more interested in trying to manipulate newly-sworn-in President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, than in working to reinforce democracy in the country by recognizing Machado. Rodríguez, loyal to Chavez and Maduro, today denounced the arrest of Maduro as a “kidnapping” with a “Zionist tint” motivated by Trump’s desire to make “Venezuela a colony” and exploit its resources.
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In 2003, on the eve of U.S. invasion of Iraq and capture of the country’s President Saddam Hussein, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, predicted that U.S. forces would be greeted as “liberators” with “sweets and flowers” or “flowers on the end of rifles.” Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC’s Meet The Press that Iraqis would see the Americans as liberators. “Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans,’” said Cheney.
Some 4,492 U.S. military combatants died in the warfare the ensued in Iraq, along with 318 allied combatants. At least 32,000 U.S. military personnel suffered serious wounds in action. The Iraq Body Count Project estimates that between 186,901 and 210,296 Iraqi civilians died between 2003-11. A medical analysis adds 461,000 excess deaths among Iraqis due to collapse of healthcare systems, starvation, exploding landmines, and disease. Iraqi security forces lost nearly 18,000 lives.
and
https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq-War
A search of Google Images could find no examples of Iraqis placing flowers in American rifles.
During a February 2016 Presidential debate in South Carolina Donald Trump had a tense exchange with his key Republican challenger, Jeb Bush, brother of the man who led the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said. “George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”
As Rachel Maddow said this morning on MS NOW, “All of the purported explanations for what’s happened here don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. The president has never articulated a coherent rationale for having done this…That said, he’s done it, so in the immortal words of General Colin Powell, if you break it, you own it.”
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(At 8:15 pm, outside my windows, Nicolas Maduro and his wife are flown by helicopter past the Statue of Liberty en route to the Metropolitan Detention Complex in Brooklyn. Photo by Garrett, via cell phone.)
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Bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, expert in global health, epidemics, human impact of climate change. |
