Venezuela: American regime change with a Trumpian touch | Policy

United States President Donald Trump has kicked off the new year with a typically deranged bang. conduct massive airstrikes against Venezuela and reportedly captured the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, who was taken to an undisclosed location.

The attack isn’t entirely a surprise, given Trump’s history of doing whatever he wants without a regard for the law — or his own promise, you know, to stop waging war abroad.

Indeed, Trump has been talking for months about the possibility of increased U.S. military action against Venezuela, as the United States has done. bomber boats willy-nilly off the coast of the country, supposedly in the name of fighting drug trafficking.

This led to numerous extrajudicial executions and accusations of war crimes. But hey, this is all part of the daily work of an administration that doesn’t care at all about the legal justification for its behavior, much less about human rights and other such stupid concepts.

The United States also hijacked several oil tankers, and Trump made some perfectly ridiculous remarks. allegations that Venezuela is guilty of stealing U.S. oil, land and assets.

This latest wave of US aggression follows decades of US sanctions, which have crippled the Venezuelan economy and constituted a form of war for themselves. Since 2020, former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas calculated that 100,000 Venezuelans have already died due to coercive economic measures.

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And even though the Trump administration has made Maduro the latest international scarecrow and existential threat, that narrative leaves much to be desired. Objectively speaking, the United States itself is guilty of far more extensive and global criminal behavior than the bumbling Maduro.

Ditto for Israel, the main ally of the United States, whose leader Benjamin Netanyahu has been feted several times by American presidents over the past two years. Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, no one in Washington would ever suggest that Netanyahu be sent to stand trial in the United States, which would rather throw billions of dollars at the Israeli military in order to contribute to mass slaughter.

In contrast, oil-rich Venezuela has long been a thorn in the side of the US empire, starting with Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, who propagated such dangerous anti-capitalist ideas as universal health care.

Today, the Trump administration accuses Maduro of serving as a ringleader in “narcoterrorism,” which would be laughable if it did not result in such large-scale destruction and a blatant violation of international law.

Clearly, Trump is not the only US president in recent history to engage in blatantly illegal actions abroad – even if he manages to add a certain dramatic layer of insanity to everything he does.

We remember the case of the late Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who remained for years in the pay of the CIA, despite the American government’s full knowledge of his drug trafficking activities.

When Noriega ceased to be seen as a valuable anti-communist ally in the 1980s, the United States turned on him, spontaneously transforming him into the face of evil.

In December 1989, President George HW Bush launched a obviously crazy attack in Panama, where several thousand civilians were killed in the poor neighborhood of El Chorrillo, in Panama.

Noriega was finally captured by American forces in 1990, after his brief stay at the Vatican embassy in the Panamanian capital was made unbearable by American tanks stationed outside. The speakers of the armored vehicles subjected him to a continuous playlist of musical torture, including the song Wanted Dead or Alive by singer Jon Bon Jovi and God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood.

The Panamanian was taken to stand trial – where else? – in the United States, where the government apparently detected no hypocrisy in asking his former friend to answer in court for activities he had previously approved.

There was also the war in Iraq in 2003, fought on the basis of lies fabricated by Bush’s son, President George W. Bush and his administration. The United States invaded the country, claiming it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Of course, these elements were nowhere to be found, but the US military nevertheless pulverized various parts of the country and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured, tried and summarily executed by the US-appointed Iraqi interim government.

Indeed, wherever the United States has intervened militarily, nothing good has tended to ensue. This latest attack on Venezuela will not mark the end of the story, contrary to Senator Lee’s assertion that Rubio plans “no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in US custody.”

Rest assured that while impunity in the United States rages, the murderous spectacle is far from over.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.