A Special Message to the Editorial Board of the Washington Post and other MSM lackies
You stood and clapped like a trained seal when the administration staged its gangster kidnapping of Maduro, a grotesque little coup dressed up as “justice.” Trump himself told the world, in his usual incoherent way, that this was about oil — about seizing Venezuela’s reserves and handing them to American companies.
Now, with the blood still warm and the smoke still rising from Caracas, you pretend that the oil never mattered, that this was all some noble, disinterested act of humanitarianism. Spare us the pantomime.
You’ve cheered an act of imperial piracy and called it policy; now you’d like to pretend that the loot was never the point. Your moral vision isn’t merely short-sighted; it’s willfully blind, a self-serving fog that descends whenever empire and oil are on the table.
Try, if only for the sake of your own dignity, to rip the cataracts of hypocrisy from your eyes before you lecture the rest of us about principle.
Thankfully, Asia Sentinel fulfills its namesake in reporting the truth without fear or favor.
Thank you for this excellent piece from Michael Vatikiotis.
While commenting on the (otherwise excellent) editing, it might also have been worthwhile inserting the initials "H.W." into the sentence <"Five years later, when President George Bush ordered US troops into Kuwait to counter an Iraqi invasion, the US was similarly praised."> in order to avoid any ambiguity about which President George Bush was responsible for the successful international coalition intervention "sans regime change" against Iraq's invasion of Iraq over 1990-1991.
Younger readers might understandably confuse the events of 35 years ago with the deluded 2003 invasion of Iraq in 2003 by US forces under President George W. Bush (H. W.'s eldest son), which led to the US military occupation of Iraq for seven years, the gutting of the Iraq government and its replacement by a tragically flawed transitional government under the US-led Coalition Provision Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer, the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein after a show trial, and the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) "caliphate" in Iraq over 2014-2018.
George W. Bush's bungled invasion and regime overthrow in Iraq surely must rank among the other momentous US interventions in the leadership bodies of sovereigh countries along with the 1960s-1970s Vietnam War, the CIA-engineered coup against Allende in Chile, and the extraction of Ferdinand Marcos from Manila, to name just a few.
A Special Message to the Editorial Board of the Washington Post and other MSM lackies
You stood and clapped like a trained seal when the administration staged its gangster kidnapping of Maduro, a grotesque little coup dressed up as “justice.” Trump himself told the world, in his usual incoherent way, that this was about oil — about seizing Venezuela’s reserves and handing them to American companies.
Now, with the blood still warm and the smoke still rising from Caracas, you pretend that the oil never mattered, that this was all some noble, disinterested act of humanitarianism. Spare us the pantomime.
You’ve cheered an act of imperial piracy and called it policy; now you’d like to pretend that the loot was never the point. Your moral vision isn’t merely short-sighted; it’s willfully blind, a self-serving fog that descends whenever empire and oil are on the table.
Try, if only for the sake of your own dignity, to rip the cataracts of hypocrisy from your eyes before you lecture the rest of us about principle.
Thankfully, Asia Sentinel fulfills its namesake in reporting the truth without fear or favor.
God bless uncle sam for making the world safe for democracy. 🤮
Thank you for this excellent piece from Michael Vatikiotis.
While commenting on the (otherwise excellent) editing, it might also have been worthwhile inserting the initials "H.W." into the sentence <"Five years later, when President George Bush ordered US troops into Kuwait to counter an Iraqi invasion, the US was similarly praised."> in order to avoid any ambiguity about which President George Bush was responsible for the successful international coalition intervention "sans regime change" against Iraq's invasion of Iraq over 1990-1991.
Younger readers might understandably confuse the events of 35 years ago with the deluded 2003 invasion of Iraq in 2003 by US forces under President George W. Bush (H. W.'s eldest son), which led to the US military occupation of Iraq for seven years, the gutting of the Iraq government and its replacement by a tragically flawed transitional government under the US-led Coalition Provision Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer, the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein after a show trial, and the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) "caliphate" in Iraq over 2014-2018.
George W. Bush's bungled invasion and regime overthrow in Iraq surely must rank among the other momentous US interventions in the leadership bodies of sovereigh countries along with the 1960s-1970s Vietnam War, the CIA-engineered coup against Allende in Chile, and the extraction of Ferdinand Marcos from Manila, to name just a few.
What makes you label Salvador Allende as a dictator?
You're right. He was replaced by a dictator. We should have caught it in editing. Our mistake, thanks for noticing -- Eds.