Plunder: How Trump's Greed Is Turning America Toward Piracy And Autocracy
President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet meet with US oil executives in the White House on January 9, 2025
The Wall Street Journal editorial board has delivered its share of idiocies over the past few years, but its response to the capture of Nicolas Maduro has set a new standard. Calling the military intervention "justified" because Venezuela had allied with "Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran," the board then declared triumphantly that "Mr. Trump is pursuing the Bush freedom agenda, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Are we all neocons now?"
Also living in a dream world is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who told Fox News, "We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here." Fetterman then offered a benediction, saying that he just wanted to "remind everybody that America is a force of good order and democracy, and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys."
That's delusional, and I say that as someone who believed in humanitarian interventions abroad, who supported the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the bombing of Serbia and the invasion of Grenada. American power has been used for bad ends at times (the Mexican War was unadulterated aggression), but it's hard to think of a country that has more often extended itself for good purposes around the globe. We had losses and failures — South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya — but tens of millions of people in places like Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Bosnia and, yes, Iraq owe their freedom and prosperity to American arms. Hundreds of millions more live free from oppression only because the United States armed them against aggressors or threatened to use force if they were attacked. Damn right, we were the good guys!
As Colin Powell put it in 2003: "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years ... and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."
To imagine that President Donald Trump is doing anything remotely like those interventions in Venezuela is risible. "Good order and democracy"? At his strutting press conference, Trump mentioned the country's oil more than 20 times and democracy not at all. Asked later whether the United States would encourage elections, Trump dismissed the idea: "We have to fix the country first. You can't have an election. There's no way the people could even vote." Would a "freedom agenda" president beat his chest and roar that "American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again"?
That press conference was not about democracy or human rights or even capitalism. It was about straight up plunder undergirded by threats. The country's oil, Trump announced, would be pumped by American oil companies for American oil companies — not even for American taxpayers. The welfare of Venezuelans is, at best, an afterthought, if that. Trump's eyes sparkle at the prospect of looting another country's natural resources. His lone complaint about the first Gulf War was that we failed to "take the oil." He has shaken down Ukraine for its rare earth minerals, and he is casting lascivious glances Greenland's way. But sure, it's a freedom agenda.
In the past, when the United States has toppled dictators, it has sought plausible leaders from among the democratic opposition and sometimes settled for less than inspiring choices like Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki. Not only is the Venezuelan opposition unusually united and organized; not only does it have a legitimate president in Edmundo Gonzalez; but it has a clear leader in Maria Corina Machado, who happens to be a global heroine and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The opposition won that election with two-thirds of the vote, though Maduro refused to recognize his loss (sound familiar?) and held onto power. There is no need to search for plausible democratic leaders. They are right there, but Trump said Machado is unable to lead: "She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
How can the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others credit the idea that Trump is pursuing some sort of freedom agenda when he has rejected the clear democratic leader of the country and the winner of the last election, and instead chosen to work with Maduro's Marxist Vice President Delcy Rodriguez?
Trump and his people don't leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest, but the justifications are delusional. None of the reasons that Venezuela is truly guilty seem to interest Trump, but he's obsessed with the fantasy that they somehow emptied their prisons and insane asylums and shipped the inmates to America.
This. Is. Not. True.
Back in 1980, when Trump was just a novice charlatan, Fidel Castro did something like that during the Mariel boatlift. Trump got that idea stuck in his brain and spews it about every country he dislikes.
The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.
Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.
Reprinted with permission from Creators
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