This crossed out desk:
POSITION AVAILABLE: CJA ATTORNEY SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
Must have three years of experience in criminal law, two jury trials, one in narcotics trafficking. Spanish speaking preferred. Apply on-line. SDNY.
Many readers are emailing us asking our opinion of the military operation to arrest Maduro and his wife in Venezuela. We have these thoughts:
1: As the secretary of state repeated multiple times, Maduro was not the elected leader of Venezuela. He lost the election and seized power. Three cheers for nation building!.
2. In watching the press conference by the President, secretary of defense, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, we were struck by one thought: They all ignored, or forgot, or never learned of one of the most valuable lessons taught by the greatest statesman of the 20th Century: Winston Spencer Churchill:
In Victory Magnanimity;
in Defeat, Defiance.
We saw a lot of chest thumping "no could do what we did" kind of statements, that strangely we never saw Eisenhower do after the Normandy Landings, McArthur after the Inchon landing, the Israelis after the Entebbe raid, or the government under Obama after Bin Laden was killed.
In short, there was no magnanimity. And that leads to people believing their own hype and PR and chest thumping and over-confidence. And that leads to a terrible tragedy. We hope this does not occur. We shall see.
If you believe Trump and his supporters, Biden didn't win the 2020 election. Would his supporters have applauded China, if it had kidnapped Biden and his wife, and declared that it would remain here as long as it took to extract our oil, I mean, establish a just and peaceful transition to be led by China?
ReplyDeleteOne thing is for sure. Maduro got his ass shumied by Trump and the USA. Will the Q go to NYC and save him?
ReplyDeleteWho is Q?
DeleteVenezuela is a major staging area for cocaine destined for Europe and the USA. No drugs move thru Venezuela without payment to the Venezuela government. This is not up for debate. I thought Trump made a very fair deal to Maduro to leave power , leave with money and given safe passage to Russia or China. This was a miscalculation by Maduro. Especially when his wife was at risk.
ReplyDelete"This is not up for debate." Actually it is: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/world/americas/venezuela-drug-trade.html; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/5/what-is-the-us-charging-nicolas-maduro-with; https://www.kcra.com/article/venezuela-drug-trafficking-cocaine-fentanyl/69676930. Although Venezuela is not "a major staging area for cocaine destined for ... the USA," other countries are. Should we kidnap their leaders, and occupy them until they cede to our demands?
DeleteHere's an article by PBS debating Trump's other casus belli: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-trumps-claims-after-u-s-strike-on-venezuela-and-capture-of-maduro. And poof, Trump disappeared PBS. Trump is trying to disappear other media that debate his assertions.
You may have missed this, but we killed approximately 80 people in kidnapping Maduro and his wife. We're threatening to occupy Venezuela for an indeterminate time period, and take its oil. We're blockading the country, starving the people in order to cause its collapse. This is not about Maduro. This is not about drugs. This is about oil. "This is not up for debate."
Maduro in Venezuela was controlling the world's largest oil reserves, and was undermining the U.S. dollar by trading Venezuelan oil using BRICS, and avoiding trading oil in U.S. dollars, thus undermining the U.S. dollar's status as the world's leading reserve currency, which affects everything in the free world.
ReplyDeleteCapitalists are for the dollar, commies are for BRICS.
Take your pick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
Every invader/occupier of another country has a pretext. How Venezuela chose to sell its oil should win prizes for the lamest pretext ever.
DeleteLet's not forget that the reason Venezuela sold oil to China was because Trump prevented it from selling oil to the United States.
DeleteThe U.S. may have a valid claim on Venezuelan oil because U.S. companies developed the infrastructure and extracted the oil, then in 1976 the communists nationalized the U.S. infrastructure that built it. See the New York Times story "Trump’s Claim That Venezuela ‘Stole’ U.S. Oil Fields Touches Nationalist Nerve"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/world/americas/trump-venezuela-oil-fields-stolen-claims.html
"American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela," Mr. Miller said. "Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs."
Mr. Miller did not specify which of Venezuela’s nationalizations informed his stance.
In 1976, Venezuela took control of the assets of ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron, using them to create the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela. Unlike sudden nationalizations elsewhere at the time, this process was a negotiated transition after decades of incremental policy shifts."
Still, the threat to the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency is the #1 issue. Capitalism vs communism, G7 vs BRICS
Where capitalism relies on extraction at unfair prices from poorer weaker countries, it becomes imperialism. So you're talking about socialism as a governing principle in the poorer country v. imperialism to benefit wealthy American industrialists. That's what the British empire did for the benefit of its tea company and its nobility. Trump is planning to occupy Venezuela for years to come, allowing the oil industries to run the country for its own profit, with help from the defense industry. Do you think the alleged threat to the US dollar justifies that?
DeleteLook. Dumb ass did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Accept it and move on. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think that the long-term occupation of Venezuela for the benefit of big oil (and dumb ass) is the right thing?
DeleteAs usual the bloggers on this site are analyzing the Venezuela situation on the outer fringes of the onion where the brown flakes fall into your hand as you lift the onion at the supermarket into your basket. Now the Onion Peeler will school you. The United States must in the long term mobilize support , or fear, or acquiescence, even invasion and taking control of nations to our south in the Caribbean, South America, and Latin America to prepare for the inevitable showdown with CHINA. The Truman doctrine must be implemented to prepare for the Western Hemisphere to defend itself from China and her allies ( India ?, Russia?, N. Korea? Japan?).
ReplyDeleteOne need only look at the duplicity by Stalin and Hitler and Japan in agreements before, and during WW II. Trump has the courage and foresight, although extremely unlikely it was his idea but for which he will take credit. As usual he takes one step forward, good, then two backward. It helps reduce black on black crime in DC, Memphis and other cities but then ICE murder a citizen by an macho agent who can't take one step to his left and instead uses that time to pull his gun. The US must prepare for China and Venezuela and the nations and waters to our south are a start. The American lives being saved by preventing fentanyl entering our borders, a war with a major player China ( who former FBI director Wray warned of several times testifying to Congress and cyber attacks especially) killing 1 million americans in 10 years. What is our 1 trillion a year military for- our protection or Europe's. Next on Trump's to do list: Mexico and Colombia drug cartels, further nobel peace prize efforts in Ukraine and Israel, continued assaults on perceived enemies and payback for his criminal prosecutions and Mar A Lage raid on his home, and the piece de resistance, drum role please, preparations for his third term, thank you mayor Bloomberg!