So, we’re looking to straight-up take over Venezuela, eh?

Did someone sit 47 down in front of a television late last week, start playing the Al Pacino movie “Scarface” and tell him it was intelligence footage of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or something? Because I’m trying to understand not only how we blatantly bombed the capital city of Caracas and then flat-out kidnapped the country’s president and his wife, and ended up with these charges against Maduro:

• narco-terrorism conspiracy

• cocaine importation conspiracy

• possession of machine guns and destructive devices

• and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US

If you have somehow managed to miss the news, the United States military invaded Venezuela early this morning (Saturday), located the Venezuelan president and his wife in their home on a military base, inexplicably took both of them into custody, and has said they are now en-route to the United States where Maduro (and his wife? Again, why is she along for the ride?) will face the above charges.

My “Scarface” snark comes as a result of, if you are familiar with the film, a scene in which Al Pacino’s character, high on the supply of cocaine he trafficks, opens fire on a group of folks with a pair of automatic weapons, saying something like “Say hello to my little friends!”

Because the notion of highlighting cocaine and machine guns in the charges feels almost like parody.

It’s not that Venezuela has nothing to do with cocaine. It is a pathway for coke, mostly from Central America, to make its way to other countries. Countries other than the United States, I might add. Yes, some of it comes here, but it’s only like 10% of our street cocaine that comes through Venezuela. Also, weren’t we accusing Venezuelan gangs of flooding our streets with illicit fentanyl?

Or did the regime here in the United States finally realize that lie wasn’t going to work and they had to switch up the story?

It’s all ridiculous, and would be almost absurdly funny if it weren’t for the fact that we just rolled into another country, kidnapped its leader, and are openly reviving racism-fueled imperialism and empire building. Because, even though we don’t seem to have an occupying force on the ground in Venezuela (yet) and officials there are vocally rebuking the United States, 47 has said today that the United States will “run” Venezuela “until such time that we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

Even while folks like Venezuela’s defense minister and attorney general decry our actions, 47 has said, “All political and military figures must realize that what happened to Maduro can happen to them.” We have the gall to kidnap their president (yes, Maduro is a piece of shit, but lots of world leaders we haven’t [and won’t] kidnap are shits), and then we threaten them if they don’t let us run things now.

The rest of the world is absolutely roasting our asses, and rightly so, because this is as out of line as Russia invading Ukraine and, in some ways, is worse, because even Putin hasn’t kidnapped Ukraine’s president. OK, it’s an extended war on Ukrainian soil, with deaths galore, so it’s worse than what we’ve done in or near Venezuela so far militarily speaking I think, but still the optics of abducting a world leader are awful in terms of foreign relations and reputation on the global stage, and threatening to take over a sovereign nation is insanely and diabolically bold. So yeah, It’s pretty damn bad. We’re definitely in the same ballpark as Russian aggression right now.

And let’s be clear, there has been no link established between Maduro and drug traffickers at any point, and it’s not about drugs anyway. It’s about resources—access to rare earth elements and mostly access to oil, as Venezuela has 17% of the world’s oil reserves and nationalized its oil industry decades ago, kicking American (and other) oil companies out of the country.

Following this abduction of Maduro, 47 even said that U.S. oil companies would be taking charge of the country’s energy infrastructure. He said, “We are going to run the country right … It’s going to make a lot of money … they stole our oil.” He’s not being at all subtle; he’s openly saying it’s about greed and “taking back” something that was never ours to begin with.

Let’s also point out that our president didn’t notify the Armed Services Committee in Congress about this attack in advance, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming this was because it was “largely a law-enforcement” operation, while 47 blabbered out after he said those words that it was because “Congress has a tendency to leak.”

Also, this intrusion onto Venezuelan soil and the abduction of the president and our assertion we will run things for as long as we think we need to—all of this runs totally contrary to what Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress when they insisted that the administration’s objective in Venezuela was not about regime change or toppling Maduro.

What the hell sets us apart from Russia at this point? Not much. We have now openly violated the sovereignty of a nation in a way we don’t usually do so blatantly, and we did so out of a clearly-stated campaign to get back into the oil business in that country. We are not just bullies but invaders, thieves, kidnappers, liars, and frankly an international menace at this point.

I’m sure that many rebukes will be coming our way. Maybe sanctions. But sadly, I don’t think much will happen to us really, even though it should. Russia continues to do misdeeds with no one overtly trying to stop them, and they continue to serve on the United Nations Security Council. I have little faith that anyone will do much to stop us in Venezuela. We might get our reputation tarnished and might feel some economic impact, but I doubt much else.

And worst of all, this is just going to encourage 47 and his regime to push harder on taking control of Greenland or making Canada the 51^st state. I don’t think our allies are safe from us militarily attacking them and I don’t know that anyone could in any practical way stop us from doing so. The administration is bold enough, uncaring enough, and is riding such a strong high of getting everything it wants usually that I don’t know where it all ends.

But it seems to start with us not just doing regime change in Venezuela but also taking over the country, whether directly or indirectly.

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