Venezuela

The man who wants a Nobel Peace Prize threatened boots on the ground today. He wants to be like his heroes Putin and Hitler.

str8line said:

The man who wants a Nobel Peace Prize threatened boots on the ground today. He wants to be like his heroes Putin and Hitler.

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Boots on the ground in Venezuela for what?

Sardines said:

Boots on the ground in Venezuela for what?

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Drill baby drill.

I’ve been saying for a while now that Trump sees the world as divided up among Strongmen, with portions of the globe they regard as “their own” to dominate and control. And so this NY Times article argues:


President Trump opened the year with pledges to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

He is ending it by bombing boats from South America, stationingthe world’s largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and exploringmilitary options against Venezuela’s autocratic leader.

In a sharp shift of decades of U.S. foreign policy, the Western Hemisphere has become the United States’ central theater abroad. In addition to military threats and action, the White House this year has carried out punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas.

Mr. Trump has said he is seeking to stop drugs and migrants from entering the United States. But, in other moments, top administration officials have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet……

……..
Many observers have begun calling the new U.S. approach “the Donroe Doctrine” — a term that appeared on a January cover of The New York Post — a Trumpian twist on a 19th-century idea.

In 1823, President James Monroe aspired to stop European powers from meddling in the hemisphere.

In 2025, the competing power is China, which has built up enormous political and economic power in Latin America over the past several decades.

Some foreign policy analysts believe that Mr. Trump would like to divide the world with China and Russia into spheres of influence. In recent months, top U.S. officials have explained their strategy in those terms.

“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote Thursday, in the latest example.

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And another thought:


When the attorney general of the United States took personal charge of Operation Mongoose, he declared it America’s “top priority”, saying “no time, money, effort or manpower” was to be spared.

The official in question was Robert Kennedy and the supreme objective that mattered more than anything else was toppling Fidel Castro and “liberating” Cuba from Communist rule.

Operation Mongoose and its famously futile campaign of subversion began in November 1961, inspiring plenty of Hollywood movies but not the dawn of freedom in Cuba.

Now, incredible though it seems, the evidence increasingly suggests that history may be repeating itself and Donald Trump’s administration is considering a comparable enterprise.

Trump has already concentrated about 10 per cent of the entire US Navy in the Caribbean, including guided missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and two amphibious assault ships. This formidable force has just been strengthened by the arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s biggest aircraft carrier, having steamed westwards across the Atlantic at the head of a naval strike group.

The primary target of this military build-up – America’s biggest deployment in the Caribbean since an intervention in Panama in 1989 – is Venezuela’s far-Left and bitterly anti-US regime under Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian successor to the late Hugo Chavez.

But that is not the whole story. Experts believe that Trump, and especially Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, may see regime change in Caracas as a necessary prelude for what they want most of all, which is regime change in Havana and the final “liberation” of Cuba, exactly 65 years after President Kennedy made this America’s top priority.

The rulers of both countries are certainly seen by Washington as ruinous, repressive, corrupt and dangerously close to America’s adversaries, particularly China and Russia. And the tradition of America asserting its pre-eminence over its own hemisphere – symbolised by Trump’s unilateral decision to re-label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – goes back more than two centuries to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.

Sardines said:

Boots on the ground in Venezuela for what?

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Exactly.

You Americans don't tend to fight well in jungles, especially against Marxist guerillas.

This seems like an unpopular idea.

I thought Trump was against regime change? Thought he was an isolationist. On the other hand, he does consider himself the Strongman in charge of the Western hemisphere.

Anyway, I should think we would have learned by now. How did removing Saddam in Iraq go?


As President Trump pressed during his first term to oust President Nicolás Maduro, U.S. officials ran a war game to assess what the Venezuelan strongman’s fall might unleash.

The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.

Those unclassified findings, supported by other expert analysis, underscore the risk associated with Mr. Trump’s second-term push against Mr. Maduro.

While Mr. Trump has not explained his precise goals regarding Venezuela, he has described Mr. Maduro as an outlaw and an enemy of the United States, and has moved troops, warships and aircraft within striking distance of the country.

Why is Trump so obsessed with Venezuela?

Sardines said:

Why is Trump so obsessed with Venezuela?

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Its kinda like the iraq war. We were lied to about WMD's so we could force a regime change and get us some oil.

Now we are being lied to about the drug trade so we can force a regime change and drill baby drill. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world from what I hear.

fishonjazz said:

Its kinda like the iraq war. We were lied to about WMD's so we could force a regime change and get us some oil.

Now we are being lied to about the drug trade so we can force a regime change and drill baby drill. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world from what I hear.

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We didn't get oil from Iraq. We didn't take over Iraqi oil fields and nationalize them. We're not going to nationalize the Venezuelan oil industry.

Without going to war we can force the same kinds of "deals" that favor the preferred international corporations that will slide Trump his cut.

Sardines said:

We didn't get oil from Iraq. We didn't take over Iraqi oil fields and nationalize them. We're not going to nationalize the Venezuelan oil industry.

Without going to war we can force the same kinds of "deals" that favor the preferred international corporations that will slide Trump his cut.

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I just remember stuff like this when that war happened: A key motivation for U.S. foreign policy in the region has been the desire for a stable supply of oil from the Persian Gulf, of which Iraq holds a significant portion of global reserves. The invasion was viewed through this lens, with a long-term goal of stabilizing the region to ensure a reliable source of oil on the global market, rather than a direct takeover for profit.

fishonjazz said:

I just remember stuff like this when that war happened: A key motivation for U.S. foreign policy in the region has been the desire for a stable supply of oil from the Persian Gulf, of which Iraq holds a significant portion of global reserves. The invasion was viewed through this lens, with a long-term goal of stabilizing the region to ensure a reliable source of oil on the global market, rather than a direct takeover for profit.

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I also remember people saying "We're invading Iraq so we can take their oil" but that's just not how it works. Oil is a commodity and these countries are not hoarding their supply.

So they attacked a boat, there were a couple people who didn't die in the attack so they went back in to finish them off.

Orders to "leave no survivors" are ILLEGAL. It is a war crime by all definitions. Specifically, killing people whose boat/ship has been sunk is word for word prohibited.

Sardines said:

So they attacked a boat, there were a couple people who didn't die in the attack so they went back in to finish them off.

Orders to "leave no survivors" are ILLEGAL. It is a war crime by all definitions. Specifically, killing people whose boat/ship has been sunk is word for word prohibited.

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Also, if trump truly gave a **** about drug trafficking then why did he pardon the former honduran president who was convicted of receiving millions in bribes and partnering with cocaine traffickers? He was convicted in Manhattan in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” he wrote, minutes after he returned to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he is spending the holiday weekend and took time out to visit his nearby golf club. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”

Mr. Trump has also weighed in on Honduras’s upcoming election, set for Sunday. He has endorsed a candidate, a former mayor named Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party, the same one that Mr. Hernández belongs to. Mr. Asfura had spent much of a highly contested race courting leaders in Washington, including members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

fishonjazz said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/world/americas/trump-pardon-honduras-hernandez.html

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” he wrote, minutes after he returned to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he is spending the holiday weekend and took time out to visit his nearby golf club. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”

Mr. Trump has also weighed in on Honduras’s upcoming election, set for Sunday. He has endorsed a candidate, a former mayor named Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party, the same one that Mr. Hernández belongs to. Mr. Asfura had spent much of a highly contested race courting leaders in Washington, including members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

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Flabbergasted that he hasn't been impeached yet. Trump supporters are pieces of ****.

Sardines said:

So they attacked a boat, there were a couple people who didn't die in the attack so they went back in to finish them off.

Orders to "leave no survivors" are ILLEGAL. It is a war crime by all definitions. Specifically, killing people whose boat/ship has been sunk is word for word prohibited.

Click to expand...

Yep. Pete Hegseth needs to be charged with war crimes and tried in the Hague.


View: https://x.com/holly__heart/status/1994829255126155298



View: https://x.com/Christo12919382/status/1995337151806910557




View: https://x.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1995145793393795246


View: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1994475349401370735


Clear enough?

Looking at you, Pete! War crimes much??


I don’t believe you, Donald.