Our wars in my adult life were all over quickly with definitive results: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Just kidding.
Why a war on Venezuela? Because of fentanyl?
No, most fentanyl comes from Mexico through the land border crossings.
And Trump just pardoned a convicted major drug dealer, the former president of Honduras.
To restore democracy?
Trump and the people around him don’t like democracy and are trying to wreck it here. Plus we are buddies with Saudi Arabia, selling them our most advanced fighter jets and computer chips, and Saudi Arabia is a repressive monarchy.
A war will cost all the money Trump claims to have saved by chopping agencies and employees from the government.
Venezuela has a lot of oil. Maybe it’s that. After all, our oil giants need more money.
Others believe and I tend to agree that, as Trump’s approval tanks, he and his advisors think a good little war will stir the public to support them and to silence critics. It’s called Wagging the Dog.
An acquaintance of mine who is Venezuelan and no friend of Maduro thinks the White House will try to use a war to declare an emergency and cancel the coming elections.
None of these reasons are good.
Mark Stevenson
Port Townsend