Both common sense and airlines - while often mutually exclusive - dictate one puts on their own air mask before helping those seated nearby. This is not an act of diminished sympathy, but rather a patent understanding of self-preservation: those who can’t put on their own air masks won’t be able to help you with yours.
Yet the president’s recent aggression in South America breaks this golden rule. Our elected officials have offered Venezuelans a breath of fresh air while our own struggling working-class families suffocate under inflation, unemployment, and unaffordable health care.
More often than not, America’s meddling with empire building and regime change has not worked in its favor - see history’s footnotes on The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
Just our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria through 2021 cost our nation $1.6 trillion, as reported by the Department of Defense. How much good could that money have done for our nation’s people instead? How much more are we willing to spend on yet another attempt to engender democracy abroad while stifling it at home?
The president has claimed his most recent aggression in Venezuela was to protect us from “narco-terrorism.” Yet Venezuela’s president said on record he was willing to negotiate with the U.S., a much cheaper solution than the quagmire in his nation we currently face.
“In a pre-taped interview with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet that aired on state television, Maduro said Venezuela is ‘ready’ to discuss a drug-trafficking deal with the U.S.,” reported Fox News on Jan. 2. The report then quotes Maduro as saying, “The U.S. government knows, because we’ve told many of their spokespeople, that if they want to seriously discuss an agreement to combat drug trafficking, we’re ready. If they want oil, Venezuela is ready for U.S. investment, like with Chevron, whenever they want it, wherever they want it, and however they want it.”
Not that Venezuela is even a major player in America’s war on drugs. Statistically, China and Mexico are much larger suppliers. U.S. Customs reports that 81.2% of all fentanyl smuggling arrests on our southern borders in recent years were American citizens, not Venezuelan immigrants or Hispanic gang members. Further, the president’s claim of taking over Venezuela in order to curb its drug flow runs hollow given his recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Hernandez, who was convicted of trafficking more than 400 tons of cocaine into our country.
So why the sudden attack in Venezuela?
Historian, author, and professor Dr. Heather Cox Richardson expressed serious concerns last week that the president’s move had nothing to do with peace, but instead aligned with his plans to break the international rules-based order – the worldwide doctrine established following World War II to prevent global warfare by respecting nations’ right to self-govern.
“[Trump] is claiming the right to invade another country without provocation,” she warned recently on social media. “This is an attempt to side with Russia to overturn the rules-based international order and align the United States with Russia, rather than with Europe, rather than with democracies” or the idea of national sovereignty.
Richardson added that once the premise of international sovereignty is breached, “we will have also given up a significant portion of the American Constitution and given the president the ability to take the US military and do whatever he wants with it, without oversight by Congress.”
Already, the president has publicly discussed other nations in need of his special consideration. Recently on Fox and Friends the president said, “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.” Last week he expressed concern that Cuba is a “failing nation” and “something we’ll end up talking about” because “we want to help the people” and also threatened the president of Columbia, indicating he should “watch his ass.”
On Sunday, the president told The Atlantic, “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.” The wife of presidential Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has since posted on X a photo of Greenland covered in America’s red, white and blue with an ominous caption: “SOON.”
Forcibly inserting ourselves in another nation’s political and economic struggles will do us no favors, as history has proven. Rather than spend billions on another ill-advised regime change, our nation would be better served using those tax dollars to address the myriad issues facing working class Americans: the loss of health insurance subsidies, wilting SNAP benefits, our underfunded Head Start programs, the national debt.
Our nation’s own struggling communities deserve just as much of the president’s time and concern as third-world drug dealers in South America. The president’s DOGE cuts have left deep scars on the safety nets for working class families, and continue to squeeze the life out of America’s most vulnerable communities. We need champions of hope and change here, on our shores, more than we need the democracy-draped interests of oil companies secured abroad.
Wise is the man who puts his own house in order before attempting a hostile takeover of his neighbor’s garage. Before we commit any more of our service members to another unnecessary war, let us put out the fires in our backyard first.
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