Ron Paul: Is Trump Really About To Attack Venezuela? – OpEd
By Ron Paul
Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered the last of the US
diplomats out of Venezuela, saying their presence was a “constraint” on
US policy toward the country. The wording seemed intended to convey the
idea that the US is about to launch military action to place a
Washington-backed, self-appointed politician to the presidency. Was it
just bluster, designed to intimidate? Or is the Trump Administration
really about to invade another country that has neither attacked nor
threatened the United States?
While US Administrations engaged
in “regime change” have generally tried to mask their real intentions,
this US-backed coup is remarkable for how honest its backers are being.
Not long ago the National Security Advisor to the president, John
Bolton, openly admitted that getting US companies in control of
Venezuelan oil was the Administration’s intent. Trump Administration
officials have gone so far as mocking the suffering of Venezuelans when a
suspiciously-timed nationwide power failure heightened citizens’
misery.
According to media reports, Vice President Mike Pence
is angry with the Venezuela coup leader, Juan Guaido, because he
promised the whole operation would be a cake walk – just like the
neocons promised us about Iraq. Guaido said hundreds of thousands of
protesters would follow him to the Colombian border to “liberate” US aid
trucks just over the border, but no one showed up. So Pompeo and the
neocons made up a lie that Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s thugs
burned the aid trucks to prevent the people from getting relief from
their suffering. Even the pro-war New York Times finally admitted that
the Administration was lying: it was opposition protesters who burned
the trucks.
Was the US behind the take-down of Venezuela’s
power grid? It would not be the first time the CIA pulled such a move,
and US officials are open about the US goal of making life as miserable
as possible for average Venezuelans in hopes that they overthrow their
government.
Congress has to this point been strongly in favor
of President Trump’s “regime change” policy for Venezuela. Sadly, even
though our neocon foreign policy of interventionism has proven
disastrous – from Iraq to Libya to Syria and elsewhere – both parties in
Congress continue to act as if somehow this time they will get it
right. I have news for them, they won’t.
Even weak
Congressional efforts to remind the president that Congress must approve
military action overseas sound like war cries. In Rep. David N.
Cicilline’s (D-RI) statement introducing his “Prohibiting Unauthorized
Military Action in Venezuela Act” last week, he sounded more hawkish
than John Bolton or Elliott Abrams! The statement makes all the
arguments in favor of a US military attack on Venezuela and then – wink
wink – reminds the president he needs authorization beforehand. As if
that’s going to be a hard sell!
So is President Trump about to
attack Venezuela? At a recent US House hearing, one of the expert
witnesses testified that such an invasion would require between 100,000
and 150,000 US troops, going up against maybe three times that number of
Venezuelan troops in a country twice the size of Iraq. With a lot of
jungle. All for a “prize” that has nothing to do with US security. If
the president makes such a foolish move he might find the current war
cheerleaders in the Democrat Party changing their tune rather quickly.
Let’s hope Trump changes his tune and returns to his promises of no more
regime change wars.
This article was published by RonPaul Institute.