|
Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his wife, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Brady Preheim, Marty Rowe, President Elon Musk, President Trump, Stephan Miller, Mike Johnson, J.D. Vance, Vlad Putin, Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris, Trump’s MAGA followers, or my neighbor’s dogs. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
|
|
Don’t worry, we just want your oil (In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts)
Trumps Invasion of Venezuela, now Mad King Trump will run his newly illegally obtained South American country. It was a bold and surprising move for a president who campaigned against American intervention. Yet he has been into many countries who didn't want or ask him there. And he has made comments of taking over Greenland. Donald Trump, the "America First" candidate and president, has turned out to be hawkish. In less than a year in office this second time around, he's conducted strikes in seven countries, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and, this weekend, oversaw a daring middle-of-the-night raid in Venezuela. U.S. forces captured the country's president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, sending them to New York to stand trial for drug trafficking. Like Iraq, there have been shifting justifications for removing Maduro. The American people never getting the same answer twice. And in the end it will be all a lie, just like before. As the United States was about to commit to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein from Iraq 20-plus years ago now, the Bush administration made different arguments and justifications for intervention that seemed to shift like the sand dunes of the Middle East. Was it that Saddam Hussein was funding the kinds of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks? Was it getting rid of a dictator who didn't align with American values? Was it creating a democracy that could be a model for the rest of the Middle East to follow? Or was it that he had weapons of mass destruction that he couldn't be allowed to keep before they resulted in a "mushroom cloud," as then-President George W. Bush warned in 2002? Who knows, what we do know is the Bushes and friends made fortunes from Blackwater and other ventures. In the case of Maduro, is it regime change because of a dictator who again doesn't align with American values, combating drug trafficking, leveraging oil or some version of all of the above? Each of those has had their moments as the justification for the Trump administration's saber-rattling. During Saturday's news conference, Trump stressed oil as a key motivator. He said American oil companies would be going in and modernizing the country's oil production and refinement capabilities. He said the companies would invest billions and "use that money in Venezuela." He said that the "biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela" and Venezuelan ex-pats in the U.S. It's unclear how that would be managed. Trump has a long history of saying the United States should "take the oil. Hell, he pirated oil tankers and stole the oil from them. You're not stealing anything," Trump said of taking oil from Iraq in a 2011 interview with ABC. "We're reimbursing ourselves. In 2023 Trump made these comments: "We're buying oil from Venezuela," Trump said during an event in North Carolina. "When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door. But now we're buying oil from Venezuela, so we're making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it." So, in Trumps mind its ok to invade other countries if they have resources we want. On Sunday, the administration was out in full force defending its actions, pinning the reasoning on drugs, primarily. The White House has repeatedly claimed to be stemming the flow of fentanyl by striking alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, despite the fact that fentanyl isn't largely produced in Venezuela. Vice President Vance, who has been a vocal critic of U.S. intervention abroad in other cases, took on that critique on social media. Fentanyl is coming out of Mexico," a reason that Trump "shut down the border." That raises questions about what's next, are we going to invade Mexico? because we want something in Greenland we will invade there as well? What a nut job Trump is. He has thwarted the constitution at every turn; he has ignored congress. He is a mad man. Americans, including Trump and Vance, have been skeptical of U.S. foreign intervention not because the U.S. military can't pull off regime changes but because of what happens on Day 2 and beyond. Trump was asked Saturday about the United States' "mixed track record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes afterwards." The president gave a nonspecific and incongruous answer Like usual. Well, that's why we have different presidents, but with me, that's not true," he said. "With me, we've had a perfect track record of winning." He went on to cite his administration's 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, the former leader of Iran's Quds Force, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former ISIS leader. Neither of them was a head of state. He also talked about the U.S. bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities last year. But Trump did not lay out the plan for what comes next for Venezuela or his foreign policy. Trump will do anything to stay in the headlines, his approval ratings are the dump, he is trying to keep people's attention away from other policy issues that he has bad ratings in. He is coming to the point of being a lame duck.
I hope we can survive Trump and his craziness.
Tammy
|