MADURO, AND BURMA

It's funny how people want the U.S. to be the world's cop, but at the same time they complain when America acts. This seems inconsistent, but there is an easy resolution. The problem is that the U.S. does not act for the right reasons. We didn't take out dictator Maduro to free Venezuela, where the people clearly voted in 2024 that they did not want him (and before that as well). We didn't take out dictator Hussein of Iraq or dictator Gaddafi of Libya to help the people of those countries, either. Instead, we acted as part of the centuries long tradition to conquer for economic gain, in these cases for oil resources.

For Burma, the people have been calling for help from the U.S., even for a military intervention, for many years. But America has always turned a deaf ear. Even though Burma has oil and other resources, too, and where there is actually a formal human rights legal justification through the United Nations Responsibility to Protect (which to date no one has acted on, anywhere).

Am I happy Maduro is gone? Yes. Do I know why it happened? Yes. Trump wanted to distract us from the fact that Special Counsel Jack Smith was allowed to make public his case under which Trump beyond a reasonable doubt tried to overthrow the 2020 election result, and should be convicted and imprisoned; and that the release of the Epstein files (which his flunky Bondi is blocking) likely will include evidence that he is a statutory rapist and that he should be imprisoned for this as well (not to mention the crimes he has already been convicted of in New York and which always carry jail terms). But do I support Maduro's removal? No: Not for the reasons given. Had Trump argued for the intervention on humanitarian grounds, I might have gone along with it. And were he to take out Burma's terrorist junta, not for oil and rare earth elements but to save the people, would I support that? Yes. Even from Trump, a man I detest. But if he did it he should still be jailed for all his other crimes.

The odd thing is that when Joe Biden first became President there was a moment where it seemed like HE might intervene in Burma. But then the moment passed and the usual explanation is that State Department officials talked him out of it. I have always had a nagging suspicion that there was something else going on; specifically, connected to the junta's ties to North Korea. I believe Biden was briefed that Than Shwe and Min Aung Hlaing had some weapon, maybe an actual nuclear warhead, or something else, and that they would use it and create a disaster if the U.S. acted. In effect, America was, and is, being blackmailed. I continue to believe this scenario. It is not as farfetched as it sounds.

For Venezuela, the intelligence the U.S. had was amazing. Delta Force operators brought super-powerful tools to cut through the steel walls of Maduro's safe room in case he was able to get inside (he was trying to but didn't make it). Imagine what intel the U.S. has on Burma. They even knew the SSA's Yawdserk was selling nuclear materials with a Japanese gangster. For Burma, something else is going on. We just don't know what it is. But the U.S. inaction is not only deference to China.