The dogs of war keep barking and it's giving me deja vu. Dick Cheney's ghost shooting me creepy smiles ain't helping things neither. Was in high school on that fateful day in September of 2001, in the aftermath got to watch the war pigs work their magic and manipulation to invade Iraq. An invasion its architect would eventually concede was 'brutal and unjustified.'
The current regime has dusted off that tired old playbook and is attempting to run through it again, this time with Venezuela. They've swapped the Islamophobia for a more generalized nativism but blood for oil and American hegemony is still the goal.
The whole thing is a farce. Ostensibly over drugs, Venezuela is neither a major producer or transit route for the "controlled substances" that feed America's habits, but it does have some of the largest reserves of oil in the world. When you throw in pardoning drug traffickers at the same time, the whole charade would seem unserious if it weren't a matter of life and death.
"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty." --James Madison
The founding fathers of this country feared standing armies, seeing in them a potential tool of oppression, both at home and abroad. With that in mind, they delegated the authority to make war to Congress. In the years since, that authority has been steadily eroded, with it disappearing almost entirely in the aftermath of 9/11. Today, we have troops in the streets of multiple US cities while fishing boats get bombed in international waters on presidential whims.
Meanwhile, the loyal opposition is busying itself debating the red herring of whether a follow up strike to kill survivors was a war crime, and ignoring the elephant in the room of what gives anyone the right to strike in the first place? A war crime implies that a war is on, no? Was just murder with military hardware. Care to imagine the reaction were Russia to start bombing ships off the coast of Alaska?
Under such conditions it is incumbent upon us to stand up, to raise a ruckus, to make clear this is unacceptable. Yesterday some folks took to the federal courthouse at 6th and Broadway in near freezing weather here in Louisville to do just that. The 'No War On Venezuela' demonstration was part of a nationwide day of action to stop the war before it starts.
No boots on the ground
No bombs in the air
US out of everywhere