Afrasianet - Belen Fernandez - U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off the new year in his usual way, unleashing a series of massive air strikes on Venezuela and arresting its president, Nicolás Maduro, who was taken to an unknown location.
The strike was not entirely surprising, given Trump's history of ignoring laws and charters, and his own promises to stop waging wars across borders.
For months, Trump has been speaking publicly about the possibility of escalating U.S. military intervention against Venezuela, as U.S. warplanes bombed ships off its coast under the pretext of "fighting drug trafficking" — resulting in a number of people being killed extrajudicially amid repeated accusations of war crimes.
But all of this does not seem out of the ordinary in an era of an administration that cares little about legal justifications for its actions, let alone human rights concepts and other "nonsense" in its eyes.
Trump also accused Venezuela of stealing U.S. oil, territory and even "property" as part of a campaign of alleged thefts as the U.S. Navy hijacked Venezuelan state oil tankers.
This new offensive comes after decades of U.S. sanctions that have exhausted Venezuela's economy and have become so cruel that it has become a form of war in itself. Alfred de Zayas, a former UN special rapporteur, estimated that 100,000 Venezuelans had died by 2020 as a direct result of so-called "coercive economic measures."
Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee wrote on the X platform that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had informed him that Maduro had been arrested in preparation for his criminal trial in the United States, and that the airstrikes were necessary "to protect the American soldiers who executed the arrest warrant."
Despite the Trump administration's transformation of Maduro into an "international devil" and an "existential threat," this narrative does not stand up to reasonable consideration: the United States itself has committed – and continues to commit – greater and more comprehensive criminal acts attributed to the stuttering Maduro.
Take the United States' "closest ally": Israel. Its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has been accused of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip for more than two years, is being given a hug in Washington by successive American presidents. No one there dares to propose his trial, or his extradition, on the contrary; billions are given to support his army in its mass slaughter.
Oil-rich Venezuela has been a thorn in the throat of the American empire since the era of Hugo Chávez, who has been vocal about "dangerous" ideas such as "health care for all."
Today, the Trump administration is accusing Maduro of being a "leader of a narco-terrorist gang" — an accusation that would seem ridiculous if it had not left behind widespread destruction and flagrant violations of international law.
Of course, Trump is not the first U.S. president to break the law and violate it abroad, but he is dramatizing all his actions that compound the madness of the scene.
Manuel Noriega, the late leader of Panama, was for years funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), despite the U.S. government's prior knowledge of his drug trafficking activities. When he was no longer a "useful ally against communism," they suddenly turned against him, demonizing him as the embodiment of evil.
In December 1989, President George H.W. Bush launched a reckless military offensive on Panama, killing thousands of civilians in the Panama City's slum El Chorio.
After taking shelter temporarily in the Vatican Embassy, Noriega was forced to surrender under the weight of the psychological warfare waged against him by American tanks that surrounded the building, and the embassy was showered with torture songs such as "Wanted Dead or Wanted" by Bon Jovi and "God Bless America" by singer Lee Greenwood.
Almost every U.S. military intervention has led to devastation, tragedy, and division. The latest raid on Venezuela will not be the last, despite Rubio's claim that "no further intervention is needed after Maduro's arrest."
When Noriega was flown to the United States for trial, the U.S. government saw no contradiction with the fact that he had once been a "friend" they depended on.
Then there is the 2003 Iraq War, which was waged against the backdrop of lies promoted by George W. Bush and his administration about Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction," none of which were found, of course, although that did not prevent the U.S. military from leveling Iraqi cities and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Eventually, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was arrested, tried, and quickly executed by an interim Iraqi government established by the United States itself.
In fact, almost every U.S. military intervention has led to devastation, tragedy, and division. The raid on Venezuela will not be the last, despite what Senator Mike Lee (R-Wis.) said, "There is no need for further intervention after Maduro's arrest."
But don't be fooled. This "bloody show" is not over yet, as long as the United States acts as if it is above the law, immune to accountability.
American writer and journalist and author of Exile: Rejecting America and Discovering the World
• Belen Fernandez is an American writer and journalist, with several books, including Exile: Rejecting America and Discovering the World, Martyrs Never Die: Journeys Through South Lebanon, and The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman in Action. Fernandez is a contributing editor of Jacobin magazine, and has written for a number of prominent platforms and newspapers such as The New York Times, the London Review blog, Current Affairs, and the Middle East Eye.
