I’m a 72 year old Canadian who almost willfully served in Vietnam in 1971. I was saved from not going to Vietnam by being selected for the Regular Officer Training Program for Royal Canadian Navy after graduation from high school.
Three of my friends and I had planned on driving down to North Dakota, from Winnipeg and enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps as volunteers.
I had been a Royal Canadian Navy Reservist at that point for three years and since a close family friend of my parents had had their son killed in Vietnam on the morning of the Tet Offensive, and a second son killed, but (MIA) or missing in action, earlier in 1971.
The memory of them and my naive fervour to somehow go to Vietnam to avenge their deaths, meant that I was willing to join the others and enlist in the Marine Corps. Acceptance by the Royal Canadian Navy precluded me from likely making the biggest mistake of my life.
My three friends did enlist and all three ended up in Vietnam after completing basic training.
A few weeks prior to their one year enlistment being completed, we planned a reunion of sorts for all of us back in Winnipeg.
That was when Les, one of the three who went, was killed in Vietnam.
I only mention this as a reminder to myself of the emotions and anger I felt at that time, and the ramifications of his loss to his family and friends due to his death.
It has informed my attitude towards foreign interventions that seem to have had no real rationale or logic for their being, ever since.
The Spectre of War
As if the world were not unstable enough, under the present regime of Donald J. Trump, it is about to embark on what may well be the biggest mistake America has made since Vietnam.
Not even the lies that sent Americans to die in Iraq or the subsequent deaths of an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens, combatants and non-combatants alike, are likely to create the massive number of unintended consequences that an invasion of Venezuela may unleash.
America has been involved in wars for over 92% of its total existence, yet it is willing, once again to likely invade another sovereign nation on the pretext of a lie, no different than the ones that were told to embroil itself in Vietnam or Iraq.
There was no attack at the Gulf of Tonkin. That’s is a well known fact. And there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That was another well-orchestrated war based on a lie.
And now, here we (the world at large) are on the cusp of watching America attack a sovereign nation on the pretext of a patent lie.
Drugs, specifically the killer drugs of fentanyl and car fentanyl, do not emanate or flow from Venezuela. That is a fact as substantiated by the DEA or Drug Enforcement Agency of the United States of America.
It is a total fabrication from the current administration of Donald J. Trump, in order to enable or provide justification by the U.S. military and its incompetent Secretary of Defence to depose a foreign leader in order to install a puppet government and to steal the oil resources of that country for the benefit of the United States of America.
Unintended Consequences
This week, Edward S. Verona, a contributor to The Hill, stated the following in his article on national security.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5633784-consequences-us-venezuela-conflict/
“First, the consensus view among legal experts is that blowing up boats on the high seas without provocation and without warning is a violation of international law…
Second, however inappropriate a comparison between the odious Maduro regime and the Ukrainian government, any military action by the U.S. against Venezuela would be utilized by Vladimir Putin as symmetrical justification for his unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine. Such “whataboutism” is a staple of Russian propaganda…
However, in taking unilateral action without regard to the unintended legal consequences, the United States risks setting precedents that will not always rebound to its favour.”
Similarly, Representive Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Thursday slammed the prospect of the United States going to war with Venezuela, as tensions escalate between the two countries.
“I would trust that Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and a whole lot of places, would have taught us that lesson by now, and that we would be out of the regime change business”, he stated.
And the recent hypocrisy of Trump’s actions resonate.
Trump recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez amid U.S. strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. Hernandez, a convicted felon, like Trump, had been sentenced to 45 years in prison in July, 2024 after being convicted of more than 10 years of collaboration with drug traffickers seeking to move cocaine into the U.S., according to the Associated Press.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5635033-venezuela-us-war-debate/
Senate Minoirity Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated;
“We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”
America is amazingly myopic. It is also exceedingly arrogant and ignorant of what such an attack may bring in return.
The global south, already does not trust America.
There is a very good chance that such an operation would embolden Putin and Xi jinping to provide resources and materiel to Maduro in order to degrade and prolong America’s attack, success and subsequent influence in South America as a whole.
At best, a humanitarian catastrophe would result in neighbouring countries, especially Columbia. At worst, it will ensure that America loses influence in South America as almost every government fears that they too could be next.
As if the United States doesn’t have enough domestic problems, and invasion of Venezuela would create wholesale problems that would further decrease trust in America and likely push nations already aligned with BRICS, Ike Brazil, to destabilize the U.S. economy, the results of which could lead to absolute economic chaos for the United States causing both an economic crash and the loss of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
The collective memory of Americans, now many gone from the events and aftermath of Vietnam, seems to have become damaged, to the point where a collective dementia has taken over in Washington, D.C.
America is doomed to repeat its worst mistakes, and this time, the world will not assist in its recovery.
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