New Orleans        I’m not going to say that we weren’t warned.  Trump has been beating the war drums about Venezuela for months.  The US has been shooting small motorboats and their crews, like ducks on the water, for months, while making unverified claims about whether they were drug runners.  The US had built up an intimidating flotilla of carriers and support ships in the Caribbean demanding that the country’s president, Maduro resign and leave the country.

Still, I have to admit, I held onto a last straw of hope that not even Trump would be crazy enough to invade the country illegally under international law and without Congressional approval.  When we started hijacking ships on the open seas and bombing ports where they were supposedly being loaded, I knew we were going from bad to worse, but still, surely someone somewhere in Washington would tell Trump to calm down and get a grip.  There was no reason that the US needed to go any farther off the grid as a rogue nation.

I woke early on Saturday in Mexico City.  Vacation was ending.  We’d ordered an Uber for 4:45 AM to Benito Juarez International Aeropuerto.  I had packed my computer the night before, but there was no mistaking the messages and alerts on my phone.  Trump was claiming a successful strike on Caracas.  He was claiming that US forces had kidnapped Maduro and his wife, though those may not have been the words he was using.

I had been to Caracas years with my son before during the Mardi Gras lull in New Orleans during the Hugo Chavez era, when affairs there were contentious, but unsettled.  Earlier I had been to the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, Brazil, and had been nearby and watched Chavez arrive at his hotel and be greeted like a rock star. In Caracas, we had met with unions, both established as well as alternative unions Chavez was supporting politically in his own image.  Caracas is built along a valley with mountains on both sides.  We had visited one of the barrios, high above the city where Chavez had built housing and a community center, improving the area, where the heart of his base lived.  Somehow I had ended up being interviewed on a local, popular radio show that was also a Chavez outlet.  I left with uncertain, mixed feelings.  The community projects and support were impressive, but undercutting unions and the increasing control of the media was disturbing.

Maduro is not Chavez.  He has exacerbated the worst tendencies of the more idealistic Chavez in order to stay in power, eroding any pretense of democracy.  The political and economic situation has deteriorated.  At the same time, the Nobel Prize winning opposition leader inspires no confidence, as a charismatic rightwing, business puppet pledging featly to Trump while begging for US intervention.

None of which justifies or explains Trump’s actions and the US intervention, which will predictably be scorned by our allies and others around the world.  The pretense of dealing drugs is flimsy, since Venezuela is a small-timer on coke and nowhere in moving fentanyl.  Trump is increasingly clear that it’s all about oil, since Venezuela has something near 17% of the world’s reserves.  Chevron is in the wings making outlandish promises about their ability to rebuild and extend their concession and restore their longtime investments.  It’s embarrassing to think that they have been whispering sweet nothings into Trump’s ears to encourage this outrage.

Now Trump has gone farther claiming that the US might “run” Venezuela for a while, supposedly until there are “free” elections.  How many times have we heard that lie before in countries around the world.  A headline in today’s papers makes claims for Secretary of State Rubio as the “viceroy” of Venezuela.  Likely, Rubio who is equally obsessed with Cuba, as he has been over the last decade about Venezuela, has is eyes on that target as well.  Lord, save us from a twofer!

This is already terrible and will get worse.  I recently read a book, Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire, about the horror of the US activity in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in the Spanish-American war more than 125 years ago.  Sometimes the press asks random folks what book they would have the president read.  If Trump read, I would pray that he would read this one, because we are now bombing our way towards a repeat of some of the worse chapters of US history.

This is bad now and will end even worse.  Congress has to stop this.  We all need to make sure this stops now.