War of the Americas
Today I continue our Republican Congress' Series of Unfortunate Decisions with the decision that will end up with thousands of people dead or missing: the War of the Americas.
In today’s Republican Congress’s Series of Unfortunate Decisions, and this is a big one: bringing us to the brink of war with a nearby state on the American continent (Latin American nations view North and South America as a single continent). We’ve accomplished a great deal over the years through diplomacy to build relationships with our southern neighbors, despite the near-constant rhetoric that some United States citizens like to use against them. The fact is that the biggest problem our Southern neighbors have with coming up into the “first world,” so to speak…is us. I’m not saying that as a nation we should forever feel guilty about how we’ve abused our neighbors. I am saying that we need to hold ourselves as accountable as others, a concept which is completely lost on the current United States regime.
Let me explain, and read on because this isn’t the only argument I’m making.
Some of the longest torture and death campaigns ever waged in South America wouldn’t have happened if the United States hadn’t been involved. Consider the Dirty War in Argentina, where the United States backed the military junta in the late 1970s. The goal was allegedly fighting “communism,” although nobody had yet considered how fighting an idea would turn into a global destructive force during the Reagan administration. It wasn’t just Reagan, or even just Republicans, who’ve embroiled us in international incidents in the fight against communism. But this conflict being waged against Venezuela in the form of murdering citizens and stealing oil, without explicit support from Congress, is against what America professes to stand for. Do we still care about that?
If we don’t, then well…rest assured that this type of behavior is so very consistent with our troubled history of interventionism that has forged many of our current enemies. More on that later.
When I say without explicit support from Congress, you might wonder why I can lay this blame at the feet of the Republicans in Congress. It’s simple. Lacking explicit support is not the same as lacking support. The Republicans in Congress seem to have no interest in reigning in this rogue administration’s behavior. Over ninety people have died off the coast of Venezuela, and it’s been admitted now (openly by Trump’s chief of staff) that the war is a regime change effort, and it’s never been about drugs. They know this, and a handful speak publicly about it, but where’s the legislation? Where’s the Congressional oversight? Nowhere to be seen. Because if there had been such a thing as Congressional oversight, there wouldn’t be concentration camps on American soil at this very minute.
None. Zilch. Bumpkiss.
Not a bit of action has been taken by the Republicans in Congress except for ceremonial tariff rejections by the Senate. That’s it. When it impacts their pocketbooks, the Republicans in Congress get louder about it, but otherwise, crickets. And it’s not like they don’t know what war means. War means casualties. There’s no world in which Venezuelans don’t die by the thousands and United States citizens don’t die as well, many psychological deaths as they’re asked by a corrupt government to do the unthinkable.
I get it. Maduro is not a “good guy,” nor someone we should support. But please…do read up on his controversies, and see if anything looks…familiar…between what’s happened in Venezuela, and our recent sociopolitical changes.
I’ll wait.
Anything at all.
And…?
That’s exactly right. Maduro is guilty of the same tactics that Trump has been using: stacking the Supreme Court, then using it to achieve many things that would have been perceived as illegal before he installed corrupt justices. This must sound familiar by now…right?
Anyway, Republicans will be quick to tell you that it’s the dirty commies who drove Venezuela into the ground, but Venezuela’s problems stem from…well…the same problems nearly every unstable government has, including ours: corruption. But it’s always worse for single-commodity states (read: oil) —they always have this problem. Any state dependent on single-commodity sales to prop up its government is in a dire situation. Failure to look forward, to diversify and bring in trade independent of the main money product…well, we see this story across the Midwest, don’t we? Venezuela has the “company town” problem—it’s great while the company is in town and the boom is on for Model-Ts, or in this case, oil. But as soon as that demand shifts toward something else, then the companies that are over-indexed on Model-T production suddenly shutter.
It’s a mismanagement problem and a corruption problem, more than an economic system problem. And we’ve seen it time and time again. The reason for the United States seizing the oil tankers has nothing to do with drugs. It’s important to remember that oil revenue still makes up the majority of the government’s budget (it still hasn’t diversified, definitely a Maduro problem—but not one solved by violence). Declaring that oil can’t enter or leave Venezuela must be considered an act of war because it further destabilizes the region. If any of the above problems Venezuela has warrant invasion by the United States, then we’d be busily invading half the world. This war doesn’t need to happen, and destabilizing the region further only drives up asylum-seeking immigration to the United States. It’s lose-lose for the citizens of Venezuela, lose-lose for the American military, and lose-lose for the American people.
Really, the only people who win in a Venezuela war are big oil, because during their desperation, the Venezuelan people might see the need to make the only change they can and oust Maduro, but then they’re negotiating from such a position of weakness that…well…you see how Trump is treating Ukraine, right? And in this case, it’s the United States talking about invading.
Who watches the watchmen, amiright?
All of this is easily avoidable. The only reason any of it can happen is due to the complicity of the American Congress, over the years, and so much more so today. We could always use diplomacy. That’s always an option if we truly do have a problem. But we don’t. Not here, not caused by Maduro. Our here are problems caused by the Unfortunate Decisions of the complicit Republican Congress, which is why the War of the Americas is on the list.