Donald Trump on Saturday carried out a military operation in Venezuela, bombing the nation’s capital and capturing the country’s autocratic leader.
It’s a move that feels like a bad case of deja vu back to the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which turned into a nearly two-decade-long debacle that killed almost 5,000 American troops and cost more than a trillion dollars.
Like former President George W. Bush’s regime change operation, Trump’s removal of Nicolás Maduro is also based on a transparent lie.
Trump administration officials claimed that Maduro’s ouster was over his alleged role in the drug trade, when even Trump himself has admitted it’s about Venezuela’s oil reserves. That’s frighteningly similar to Bush lying that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when it was almost certainly about the United States’ interest in Iraq’s oil reserves.
Related | Trump says US is ‘going to run’ Venezuela after Maduro capture
Trump is now claiming victory because Maduro was captured and removed from power, just like Bush did with his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech after Hussein was captured.
But like with Iraq, Maduro’s ouster is not the end of this situation.
Maduro’s second-in-command is still in charge, leaving the corrupt government that has destabilized the South American country in place. Trump and his band of Cabinet-level dopes naturally have no idea what comes next.
Embarrassingly, Trump and his top officials can’t even agree on who should take over the country, let alone how they will get that change to happen.
True to form, Trump is not behind Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado because she won the Nobel Peace Prize over him, which Trump is jealous and angry about, according to the Washington Post.
What’s more, any kind of regime change to accomplish Trump’s idiotic goal of pilfering Venezuela’s oil reserves will take much more than a few bombs can accomplish—possibly requiring boots on the ground that will endanger American lives for a goal even experts say is not worth the cost.
“Venezuela could produce 4 million barrels instead of the 1 million barrels it produces per day, but it would take maybe a little bit less than a decade and $100 billion in total over that period to get it to 4 million barrels,” Francisco Monaldi, a Latin American energy policy fellow at Rice University, told The Atlantic. “Very few countries can do something like that.”
Democrats are correctly making the connection between the Iraq boondoggle to Trump’s Venezuela plan.
“Trump won’t rule out American boots on the ground in Venezuela. The American people don’t want that,” Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, who was deployed to Iraq, wrote in a post on X. “They don’t want their kids sent overseas to fight for Big Oil while they can’t afford a home or health care.”
“Military disasters like the Iraq War robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars, and of our moral standing in the world. How do you look a parent in the eye and tell them you’ve sacrificed their child’s life for Big Oil’s bottom line?” James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, wrote in a post on X. “As US Senator, I will never vote to send someone’s son or daughter to war to make billionaires richer.”
Trump’s regime change operation is even splintering Republicans and his MAGA base, which has made “America First” promise part of its identity.
“Wake up MAGA. VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote in a post on X.
Emily Singer
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