#1,062: Iraq 2.0 or, Mark Twain Was Right!
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Mark Twain, the greatest and, for my money, wittiest of all American authors, carried more satirical barbs in his literary quiver than just about anyone who ever lived. Among his best and most spot-on bon mots were:
All generalizations are false, including this one.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Reader: suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress. And one of my very favorites:
History doesn’t repeat itself . . . but it rhymes.
One result of early Saturday morning’s successful commando-style abduction and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Máduro and his wife Cilia Flores (called Operation “Absolute Resolve”) is that this last Twain quote has suddenly taken on an eeriness that can best be summed up by yet another great writer . . . Marcel Proust, whose 7-volume novel À la recherché du temps perdu (generally translated Remembrances of Things Past or literally, In Search of Lost Time) says it all. Between Twain and Proust, we have both an explanation and a warning. Indeed, there are many things about yesterday’s snatch-and-grab of the Máduros and American military actions against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya a generation or two ago that have a haunting similarity . . . call it Twain’s notion about history “rhyming.”
With Iraq, the proximate cause of our military action was Saddam's IEDs; with Venezuela, it was originally saving Americans from Maduro’s “narco-terrorism.” From all accounts, planning for the removal of Máduro began as early as August of last year. Without question this highly dangerous mission was carried out with both military deft and clandestine precision; one White House spokesperson likened its pinpoint exactitude to something Israeli commandos might carry out. During its planning stages White House officials told congressional leaders that their objective in Venezuela was not regime change, but rather the knocking out of drug trafficking. (n.b. It should be noted that Venezuela is hardly as big a player in the international drug trade [both cocaine and fentanyl] as many other in South American and Latin American countries.)
At this point in the essay, it is well to bring up yet another quote from Mark Twain that he may well have written while looking in a crystal ball and viewing a picture IT: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Throughout his political career, our beloved Pouter Pigeon has claimed to be an isolationist; a man who firmly believes that “America First!” means precisely that. And up until beginning his second go-round as POTUS he has shown little if any interest in promoting democracy abroad. But ever since last Saturday’s military seizure of Venezuelan President Máduro - a raid undertaken without Congressional approval - IT and members of his administration have been issuing warnings to several other countries and territories - including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. (In response to his bundling Greenland into the mix, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the United States had “no right to annex” Greenland and that the island was not for sale.)
So much for keeping one’s mouth shut . . .
Then there is the situation with Venezuela’s neighbor to the West, Colombia. Though Colombia is a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., IT has repeatedly threatened its President, Gustavo Petro, alleging without evidence that he (Petro) has ties to the drug trade. During an informal chat with the press aboard Air Force One, POTUS issued a stark warning to Petro and Colombia that underscored his administration's increasingly aggressive posture toward leftist governments across Latin America. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,’ he said. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out.”
Speaking of Colombia, our beloved Pouter Pigeon said: “Colombia is very sick too — run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and sending it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long.” In response, President Petro – a former guerrilla himself – said “I swore not to touch a weapon ever since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the homeland, I will take up arms again. He also stressed that his armed forces have been tasked with defending him and all Colombian cities from foreign forces, and argued that his government was leading the charge against the illegal drug trade in his country, telling Felon#47 an attack on him would only embolden the cartels.
Yesterday, Felon#47 said: “We are in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out . . . American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again.” And here I thought that this had already been addressed by the Monroe Doctrine back in 1823. (It should be noted that 47 renamed it the “Donroe Doctrine after the Venezuelan raid. How’s that for chutzpah? Oh well, at least he was painfully truthful about oil . . .)
Venezuela has the largest untapped crude oil reserve on the planet: an estimated 300 billion barrels . . . of which they extracted a mere 960k barrels/day (as opposed to the U.S., which has a proven reserve of 45 billion bbl and produces a planet-leading 20.1m barrels/day. One of the reasons why Venezuela produces so little oil on a daily or even yearly (50m bbl) is that its oil fields and pumping stations - which are secured by both the Venezuelan and Cuban military - are in a physically frightful state. (It should be noted that the majority of its oil exports go to China. It’s an obvious trade-off: China needs the oil and Venezuela needs the cash).
In order for IT’s promise to make the American takeover of Venezuela pay for itself, he will need to convince American oil companies to invest literally tens of billions of dollars in its restoration. In order for them to accede to their leader’s command, he will need to make some gigantic promises about how much they and their stockholders will make, as well as how many billions of dollars the U.S. Treasury is willing to spend in order to protect the melioration of the industry itself. And mind you, this is no overnight project; it will take years. Winning a war (or snatching a dictator) is the relatively easy part; what happens beginning the next day - that’s the hard part. It is the difference between going home and attending victory parades and settling in for a forever war . . . like Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan, to name but three.
Precisely who is going to be “running” Venezuela is anyone’s guess. Secretary of State (and current acting National Security Advisor) Marco Rubio simply has neither the time nor the talent to add “Viceroy of Venezuela” to his c.v. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s obvious problem is his glaring incompetence. Then too, there simply aren’t enough qualified, capable economists, diplomatists or internationalists left at the State Department to fill the literally hundreds upon hundreds of posts required to “run” a foreign government . . . especially on behalf of an occupying power that, try as it might, cannot get its own house in order.
Last but certainly not least, there are the issues of Congress, Constitutional legality, America’s standing within the community of nations, international repercussions (e.g. precisely how will the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ affect Xi’s vision of power in Asia), the Epstein Files and . . . dare we say . . . the midterm elections, which are a mere 241 days away. If the Democrats will only do their job (a big “if”) and continue asking voters the question “What does the Regime’s taking over Venezuela accomplish for you in terms of bringing down the price of food, health insurance, rent, paying your bills?”) perhaps they will be able to convince enough voters that enuf’s enuf!
For when you cut through all the basura y tonterias (look it up), politics works best when it speaks of to the people through pocketbook issues.
These are some of the most challenging times we have ever experienced as a nation. Indeed, it is getting harder and harder to be a patriot. How is this to be overcome? For one possible answer, we conclude where we began: with the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain:
PATRIOTISM IS SUPPORTING YOUR COUNTRY ALL THE TIME, AND YOUR GOVERNMENT WHEN IT DESERVES IT . . .
Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone