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September 16, 2018

So Trump was right all along about putting that military option on the table for Venezuela...

By Monica Showalter

About a year ago, when President Trump raised the prospect of invading hellhole Venezuela because it's driving millions of refugees out, the globalist elites clutched their pearls. Here's what Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer was writing, consulting the suited elites:

If you talk with Latin American presidents and top diplomats — as I did in recent days — you will conclude that President Donald Trump’s recent remark that he may consider a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela was a moment of monumental stupidity that is already hurting the cause of freedom in that country.

Trump’s reckless comment has already given Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a magnificent propaganda victory. It has allowed Maduro to turn the conversation in Latin America away from Venezuela’s fall into a full-blown dictatorship, and toward the possibility of a U.S. military intervention.

Today, the talk has gotten just a bit different. Get a load of this from the Associated Press:

CUCUTA, Colombia – The head of the Organization of American States has joined President Donald Trump in holding out the threat of a military intervention in Venezuela to restore democracy and ease the country*s humanitarian crisis

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro delivered the sharp warning in a visit Friday to Colombia’s border with Venezuela in which he also denounced President Nicolas Maduro*s socialist “dictatorship” for spurring a region-wide migration crisis.

“With respect to a military intervention to overthrow Nicolas Maduro’s regime, I don’t think any option should be ruled out,” Almagro said at a press conference in the Colombian city of Cucuta. “What Nicolas Maduro’s regime is perpetrating are crimes against humanity, the violation of the human rights and the suffering of people that is inducing an exodus. Diplomatic actions should be the first priority but we shouldn’t rule out any action.”

So Trump was right all along, when he brought it up the first time. And now he's getting a rather big endorsement from an organization that purports to represent the entire hemisphere. It's not a big surprise: Latin America is being flooded with millions of desperate Venezuelan refugees, fleeing for their lives. Venezuela's brand of socialism has brought them no food, no water, no electricity, no medical care, no livelihood (Maduro just put 40% of Venezuela's companies out of business with his minimum wage hike), along with an onslaught of shakedowns, corruption, gang brutality, murder, and human rights violations. Rule of law is gone. And the regime is there by naked electoral fraud.

The flood has made Venezuela's problems Latin America's problems. As many as six million refugees have fled now, the creme de la creme flying to the U.S., Spain, and Canada, and the poor, sick, and unemployable traveling on foot to Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Curacao and anyplace that serves as the next stop. With big refugee floods, there are always criminals nestled in the crowds, and those criminals have wrought havoc in Brazil, Colombia, and through the Caribbean, which is why those nations are shutting their doors.

Here's what I wrote last year:

Latin American states, particularly Colombia and Brazil with their long borders to the country, are terrified of the disintegration now taking place in Venezuela.  They fear floods of refugees and massive exports of crime.  They would probably like nothing better than to see a Marine invasion and might even send troops of their own to help out.  Even if they didn't, the reality is that they are terrified and would at a minimum probably say nothing.

Now they're singing a different tune, as if the fires have finally gotten hot enough under their feet for it. Why shouldn't they? Trump has projected an image of strength, as well as won many victories on other foreign policy fronts, watching tyrants step into line and allies come forward (take a look at battered Greece's military step-up), so it makes sense to go with a winner, and what we are seeing now is Latin American nations lining up.
 
It's an absolutely gargantuan sea change.
 
The OAS, which is the clubhouse of all of Latin America's states (it used to be a clubhouse of Latin American democracies, but during the Obama administration, they scrapped that idea and let Cuba in, following their failure to throw the dictators in democracy's clothing - Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, out.) They've been on a long slide to irrelevance downward for decades. The OAS's main forum, the Summit of the Americas, is the place where in 2005 then-lefty Argentina saw fit to seat then-President George W. Bush at a table with Hugo Chavez and hosted anti-American rallies on the side at the time. The OAS went downhill even further in 2009 when a very naive newly-elected President Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Trinidad and Tobago to shake hands with Hugo Chavez and got taken for a ride as Chavez pressed an anti-American book into his hands at the time. What an image of weakness. Later on in 2009, the OAS sanctioned tiny Honduras for throwing off a socialist wannabe dictator, saying the freedom-loving Hondurans were in violation of the OAS charter on democracies. Do you get a sense of how disgusting this organization has been? Time and again they have taken the side of Venezuela in the tired claims to respecting national sovereignty and going along with the country's pretense to being a demcoracy and now one of their own is echoing President Trump and saying an invasion is not off the table?
 
It's an amazing break from the soggy "narratives" about the U.S. being the bad guy in the region and national sovereignty being all important. Most of these lies, by the way, were the work of the Cuban propaganda machine. You can read about these narratives in the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and Carlos Alberto Montaner, which clarifies the thinking.
 
What we are looking at here is consolidation and a course shift, which is frankly the work of President Trump and his team. Everyone loves a winner, everyone loves a strong horse. That the U.S. is now seen as the strong horse throughout the hemisphere is clearly Trump's doing. Compare and contrast to all the flak and obstacles Presidents Bush and Obama got - because they projected weakness by always trying to get along as good global citizens.
 
That even the OAS has come on board for Trump is something that opens the floodgates to action. After all, things are not going to get better in that hellhole, they will only get worse. Given the break, and given the Trump administration's muscular new team, don't be surprised if Marine action isn't  already in the works.

About a year ago, when President Trump raised the prospect of invading hellhole Venezuela because it's driving millions of refugees out, the globalist elites clutched their pearls. Here's what Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer was writing, consulting the suited elites:

If you talk with Latin American presidents and top diplomats — as I did in recent days — you will conclude that President Donald Trump’s recent remark that he may consider a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela was a moment of monumental stupidity that is already hurting the cause of freedom in that country.

Trump’s reckless comment has already given Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a magnificent propaganda victory. It has allowed Maduro to turn the conversation in Latin America away from Venezuela’s fall into a full-blown dictatorship, and toward the possibility of a U.S. military intervention.

Today, the talk has gotten just a bit different. Get a load of this from the Associated Press:

CUCUTA, Colombia – The head of the Organization of American States has joined President Donald Trump in holding out the threat of a military intervention in Venezuela to restore democracy and ease the country*s humanitarian crisis

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro delivered the sharp warning in a visit Friday to Colombia’s border with Venezuela in which he also denounced President Nicolas Maduro*s socialist “dictatorship” for spurring a region-wide migration crisis.

“With respect to a military intervention to overthrow Nicolas Maduro’s regime, I don’t think any option should be ruled out,” Almagro said at a press conference in the Colombian city of Cucuta. “What Nicolas Maduro’s regime is perpetrating are crimes against humanity, the violation of the human rights and the suffering of people that is inducing an exodus. Diplomatic actions should be the first priority but we shouldn’t rule out any action.”

So Trump was right all along, when he brought it up the first time. And now he's getting a rather big endorsement from an organization that purports to represent the entire hemisphere. It's not a big surprise: Latin America is being flooded with millions of desperate Venezuelan refugees, fleeing for their lives. Venezuela's brand of socialism has brought them no food, no water, no electricity, no medical care, no livelihood (Maduro just put 40% of Venezuela's companies out of business with his minimum wage hike), along with an onslaught of shakedowns, corruption, gang brutality, murder, and human rights violations. Rule of law is gone. And the regime is there by naked electoral fraud.

The flood has made Venezuela's problems Latin America's problems. As many as six million refugees have fled now, the creme de la creme flying to the U.S., Spain, and Canada, and the poor, sick, and unemployable traveling on foot to Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Curacao and anyplace that serves as the next stop. With big refugee floods, there are always criminals nestled in the crowds, and those criminals have wrought havoc in Brazil, Colombia, and through the Caribbean, which is why those nations are shutting their doors.

Here's what I wrote last year:

Latin American states, particularly Colombia and Brazil with their long borders to the country, are terrified of the disintegration now taking place in Venezuela.  They fear floods of refugees and massive exports of crime.  They would probably like nothing better than to see a Marine invasion and might even send troops of their own to help out.  Even if they didn't, the reality is that they are terrified and would at a minimum probably say nothing.

Now they're singing a different tune, as if the fires have finally gotten hot enough under their feet for it. Why shouldn't they? Trump has projected an image of strength, as well as won many victories on other foreign policy fronts, watching tyrants step into line and allies come forward (take a look at battered Greece's military step-up), so it makes sense to go with a winner, and what we are seeing now is Latin American nations lining up.
 
It's an absolutely gargantuan sea change.
 
The OAS, which is the clubhouse of all of Latin America's states (it used to be a clubhouse of Latin American democracies, but during the Obama administration, they scrapped that idea and let Cuba in, following their failure to throw the dictators in democracy's clothing - Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, out.) They've been on a long slide to irrelevance downward for decades. The OAS's main forum, the Summit of the Americas, is the place where in 2005 then-lefty Argentina saw fit to seat then-President George W. Bush at a table with Hugo Chavez and hosted anti-American rallies on the side at the time. The OAS went downhill even further in 2009 when a very naive newly-elected President Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Trinidad and Tobago to shake hands with Hugo Chavez and got taken for a ride as Chavez pressed an anti-American book into his hands at the time. What an image of weakness. Later on in 2009, the OAS sanctioned tiny Honduras for throwing off a socialist wannabe dictator, saying the freedom-loving Hondurans were in violation of the OAS charter on democracies. Do you get a sense of how disgusting this organization has been? Time and again they have taken the side of Venezuela in the tired claims to respecting national sovereignty and going along with the country's pretense to being a demcoracy and now one of their own is echoing President Trump and saying an invasion is not off the table?
 
It's an amazing break from the soggy "narratives" about the U.S. being the bad guy in the region and national sovereignty being all important. Most of these lies, by the way, were the work of the Cuban propaganda machine. You can read about these narratives in the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and Carlos Alberto Montaner, which clarifies the thinking.
 
What we are looking at here is consolidation and a course shift, which is frankly the work of President Trump and his team. Everyone loves a winner, everyone loves a strong horse. That the U.S. is now seen as the strong horse throughout the hemisphere is clearly Trump's doing. Compare and contrast to all the flak and obstacles Presidents Bush and Obama got - because they projected weakness by always trying to get along as good global citizens.
 
That even the OAS has come on board for Trump is something that opens the floodgates to action. After all, things are not going to get better in that hellhole, they will only get worse. Given the break, and given the Trump administration's muscular new team, don't be surprised if Marine action isn't  already in the works.