It pains me no end to say it, but in the wake of the forcible toppling of the Venezuelan regime any single tatter of America's moral suasion that remained... including with regard to Russian aggression in Ukraine... is now gone. Our government as a bad actor in the world is in the same league as Putin. Worse, so far at least, than Xi or Modi. No doubt less nakedly evil than World War 2 Japan and Germany, but how is this different from the assault on Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, or in 1968 for that matter, or the Russians' invasions of Georgia or Ukraine in our time? Or countless other wars of aggression by imperialist bully states? We have set forth no moral doctrine greater than "we're the king of the hill and fuck you." The drugs rationale is a law enforcement justification for imperialism: not only wrong but fundamentally dishonest. I hang my head in shame for what my country is doing.
I not only fear but expect that it will give license to every other would be aggressor to return the world to the kind of power politics that led to both of the great world wars in the 20th century. Exactly the wrong path for us now, in the midst of the greatest environmental crisis in humanity's history, now all but forgotten by most people.
Let's not overlook that not only under international law but our own laws, this action is blatantly illegal. There is no conceivable good faith interpretation of any Congressional authorization for this act of full scale war, a power reserved in our Constitution for Congress alone. Does anyone doubt that Dictator Trump has no intention of even seeking such authorization, having once again trashed the Constitution and arrogated power unto himself? A dark day indeed for America, and the whole world.
Silence is complicity. Americans who believe in democracy MUST RESIST.
--George Washington, 1783
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