Friends, it has not escaped the notice of (mostly Trump-hating) talking heads that a lot of U.S. military and intelligence assets are being directed towards Venezuela, and destabilizing the rogue regime of President Nicolas Maduro appears to be Job One. Maduro is an anti-American socialist and, maybe, a drug sumggler. He's been a thorn in America's side for years. How far would Trump and Co. go to oust him? No one knows for sure, but pressuring/insentivizing his key allies, especially in the military, to overthrow him and turn him over to the U.S. is the most likely scenario under which "regime change" could be achieved. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is increasingly hostile to the government of Colombia, led by another lefty, El Presidente Gustavo Petro. This adds fuel to the fire, needless to say.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-aircraft-carrier-latin-america-uss-gerald-ford/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gp2lxz75eo
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Once again President Trump has laid it right on the line. "You WILL stop exporting drugs to the U.S.! If you do not, we will stop you." That's it; we know he'll back it up. My guess is that Maduro's remaining days in office are few and that that gallant woman who got the Nobel Peace Prize will, thanks to our intervention, get the chance to guide Venezuela out of its Marxist hell.
ReplyDeleteOur country's insatiable appetite for drugs is the source of limitless evil. The drug cartels are sociopathic torturers and murderers, with power derived from their control of incalculable wealth. To stand up to them takes a lot of guts on the part of Latin American leaders. I worked with some of their rank and file in NY's state prisons. I think a lot of them had only the vaguest notion of what they were involved in; they only knew that it gave them a better chance to make more money than their national economies did.
I'm certain that some people in our prisons have never had a chance to live constructive lives; some of them have only the slightest understanding of what positive living is like. Nonetheless, society must protect itself from their depredations. The same principle sadly obtains in the necessity to protect our country from mass drug importers, hopefully by intercepting their products but if sadly necessary, by crossing their borders. Its entirely appropriate to use our military power to defend us in those ways.
The only workable solution for the crime generated by our country's epidemic craving for drugs is to accede to reality and legalize some of them and then crack down hard especially on the dealers of the unavoidably destructive ones. We owe the world a maximum effort in that. Singapore's resolved intolerance of drug dealers is exemplary.
Jack, I have my doubts about whether destroying drug boats, and thus limiting the supply of certain drugs, will meaningfully affect our nation's hunger for, or reliance on, said drugs, since at bottom this is a social and spiritual problem irresolvable by, uhh, kinetic means, but, having said that, dispatching a few narco-terrorists won't cause me any loss of sleep either. As for Maduro, unfortunately Trump's ire could strengthen his hand rather than weakening it, but you never know.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Good point ; making Maduro a liability for the cartels (if he is in cahoots with them) would probably ensure his downfall in one form or another. But that would probably not disempower the cartels (?). They might well just move their bases.
ReplyDeleteMarxist countries usually do not tolerate any organization outside of the party. Maybe then Maduro is just a typical garden variety Latin American "El Jefe", who simply uses the organs of oppression installed by Chavez but has no doctrinal convictions preventing his cooperation with utterly venal people.
If we were to destroy the cartels in Venezuela would they simply relocate and continue to serve the voracious appetite of the prosperous U.S.?
But that does not explain the coincident fentanyl invasion. Surely a purely money making mob does not wish to kill its customers. Obvious in this plague is intent to work terror and resulting chaos on America for what cannot be but political reasons. And that is war and further justifies the use of our military in any of the forms in which it excells, save nuclear.
U.S. military intervention used to work, even if coincidentally, to the benefit of the countries we defeated. We have been, in several instances including our own Civil War, "the flag that sets you free". It would have worked in Vietnam but for domestic betrayal of our effort, which included 58, 000 combat deaths. Iraq is at least somewhat better off without the monstrous reign of Saddam or the fanatic murderousness of ISIS. But though we apparently chastened the Taliban into refraining from providing refuge to Al Kaida or perhaps something similar,in the end we abandoned the people (as it were in a still tribal setting), who are once again oppressed by these neomedievalists.
Our present administration is the antithesis of the preceding one, which being as it was yet controlled by Obama, an apologist to a bemused world (for which power alone is the ultimate arbiter)for an oh so historically erring U.S. in its use of its power, opened our borders to all manner of incursion short of main force. Today its "America first " and some international cynics have to have it proven to them; our markedly unapologetic President does not shrink from that either within or outside America. He will do as he must in order to at least stop the fentanyl.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: The prospects for NY state continue to darken and the only consolation, should the Marxist win in NYC, would be in the reminder to the rest of the U.S. (minus CA and maybe Illinois) that yes , that proven catastrophically wrong headed doctrine can find purchase in the very U.S. itself. And Mandami will test its own Constitutional limits and the backbone of the national administration in resisting the inevitable probing (as criminals, the Marxist celebrated "revolutionary class" ,do routinely) for loopholes through which to drive their doctrinal tanks and dissemble with America hating determination. Should he win , he will concentrate and mobilize the so far hapless Dem response to President Trump's common sense American administration.
ReplyDeleteHistory provides many examples of doomed causes rallying for a final stand. Again, I do not think America will ever accede to shameful Marxist subjugation , no matter how the commies frame it. This is historically unprecedented , their relentless political campaign to con the world's most powerful democracy into surrender to the worst doctrine ever to plague mankind. Usually they just muster brute force.
They won't succeed but the DIRT they are about to do NY state's common sense upstate 'minnahritty" with the amoeba on the Hudson as their base ought to focus an unmistakable light on what these people intend for the country!
Our national administration is already convinced of this but it needs grimly convinced support for its efforts to redeem our country from the curse of far left incipient totalitarianism we have endured since the '60s. NY state's probably impending ordeal could be a great "convincer".
Dr. Waddyfrom Jack: That Mayor of Chicago is a real piece of work. Questioned by a reporter about his policy towards, yes, illegal aliens, he exploded into reflexive and now beyond tiresome use of the race card. He expectorated words to the effect that "use of that term is comparable to use of the word slave to describe my people!"He was seconded by a member of the "squad" who lied that "undocumented" entry to our country "is not a crime". Oh my, but it is, despite the once chilling nature of far left pronunciamentos to that effect. And yes, it is an execrable fact that at one time many black people WERE slaves, through no fault of their own. But I'd challenge any who suggest (and with far leftists, suggestion amounts to condemnation) that this is still true. The Chicago Mayor was using a traditional leftist "automatic" dialogue stopper to short circuit any view which contradicted his hobbled reasoning or his all important"feelings" The by now truly effete term "racism" (through overuse and misuse)was also bandied about by the Mayor and his cohorts. These are the people who freely direct the accusation of "Naziism" to a national administration which refuses to honor their every demand. I'd challenge any of them to read Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, even ten selected pages from it! I would do this not in hope of changing their minds (if they were to take over they would surely enforce Marxist oppression which would beggar the Nazis) but simply to show that we now fully recognize their presumptuous fatuousness in freely bandying a term which describes incalculable, unimaginable evil. The great irony to be seen in it is that they champion a doctrine, Marxism, which actually far outdid the Nazis in self righteous depravity in the 20th century and which actually purposes a return to power in our very country.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how the verbally assaulted reported replied but I wish a blessedly living Charlie Kirk had been the object of this tirade. I would imagine he would first have asked the Mayor to check his facts (eg. the use of the word "alien" in our still rugged Constitution or the fact that entry and residence to our country, unprocessed by our democratically established laws, IS illegal, again by our laws, which are to leftists, infinitely malleable at their leisure). Then having been verbally assaulted , Charlie would have defended himself with firm and fearless reason and logic. Such opposition is anathema to any who rely on the automatically "discrediting" terms, especially their vast glossary of condemned "isms" , which the left has relied upon for decades for intimidation of any who heretically disagree with their unimpeachable "wisdom and justice".
Increasingly, with the example of our unapologetic President, such totalitarian dictation is recognized for the humbug that it is