The US was humiliated by its $8 trillion forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What will happen if it loses in Venezuela? What if an American fleet, or much of it, gets sunk, revealing the limits of naval power in a world full of cheap anti-ship missiles?
Transcript:
Thank you very much, Mr. Barrett, for joining us during this hour’s top headlines. Let’s go ahead and start off with the U.S military buildup and everything that is happening in Venezuela. Caracas is preparing for a likely US invasion of Venezuela. With all of Trump’s threats and all the games that he’s been playing lately, do you think that there is a possibility of the invasion of Venezuela?
Yes, I think there is a possibility. I think it would be a very ill-advised move by the Trump administration. It would essentially be a repeat of the very mistakes, the invasions of Afghanistan and especially Iraq, that Trump actually won office originally in 2016 by exposing and decrying. Trump was a critic of Bush Jr.‘s ridiculous claims that Iraq was full of weapons of mass destruction, but now Trump is doing the same thing. He just hilariously classified fentanyl, the drug, as a quote unquote weapon of mass destruction, so he can use the same excuse that Bush used to invade Iraq, which turned out to be a disaster, to invade Venezuela. And that would be at least an equally big disaster. Venezuela’s terrain is much more favorable to a guerrilla war than Iraq’s ever was. The mountains, the jungles, and then, of course, the anti-ship weapons that Venezuela may possess could deliver a terrible shock to the U.S. Navy.
The people of the region, especially the more intelligent, educated people, know about the horrors of U.S. imperialism in the region, and they will unite behind Venezuela, not just the people inside Venezuela, but everywhere else as well. I think in the same way that the Trump administration and the Israelis were surprised that Iran rallied as a nation against the evil Israeli aggression last June. And that led to a lot more virtually unanimous support for the government in Iran. The same kind of thing would happen in Venezuela, but also outside the borders, the whole continent, and indeed all of Latin America. Even Mexico will be full of people wanting to defend Venezuela and Latin America in general from these rapacious, crazy Yankee imperialists who want to come in and steal their resources, which Trump has even admitted is his goal.
Now he’s finally admitted that no, it’s not about fentanyl which of course doesn’t come from Venezuela anyway—that’s all just a ludicrous pretext—what it’s reallyabout is stealing what Trump says is “our” oil. Well, Trump, what is your oil doing under Venezuela’s land? Maybe Trump doesn’t realize…he looks at a globe and he sees that Texas is above Venezuela and he thinks the oil leaked out of Texas down into Venezuela, so he’s going to go get it back.
This is so ludicrous. And so the international community needs to stand up and say, look, we have a multipolar world now. We need it to run under some vestige of international law. And instead of having the UN and international law working together with the Americans, which has been the way it’s been since World War II, it’s time that international law and international cooperation has to happen against the Zionist occupied U.S. empire.
And Mr. Barrett, if you could briefly, please, in around a minute…you did mention a very important point that I’d like to go ahead and focus on. You said that there are people that support Venezuela that are willing to defend it, such as Mexico and other neighboring countries. But again, I want to ask about when it comes to Venezuela’s other allies around the world, such as Iran. Iran has stood by Venezuela for years now. You have Russia, you have other countries. Do you believe these countries will come in and defend and protect Venezuela in the case of an invasion by the U.S.?
I don’t think that we’re going to see Iran firing rockets at US military bases. And I don’t think we’re going to see Russia launching its unstoppable rockets at United States targets. I think that the aid to Venezuela will be deniable. And I wouldn’t be surprised—again, I’ve been making this point but haven’t seen very many other people make it, but I think it’s an important point—that the missile technology today is such that the anti-ship missiles are very difficult to stop. That is, it’s much cheaper to build a missile that can pose a real threat to sink a ship than it is to defend against that missile. And so that means that relatively cheap, relatively powerful anti-ship missiles are out there. And one of the reasons the United States has never invaded Iran, and that is off the table, is because they know that Iran can sink their ships. Years ago, Iran had Chinese sunburn missiles or the Iranian equivalent that could threaten American ships and that technology has continued progressing.
So I think that China, Russia, Iran and Cuba and North Korea and so on are going to be helping Venezuela in a covert and deniable way And they even be laying a trap for the United States. That is, if China wanted to see the United States go down without suffering horribly in a war over Taiwan, China would be very smart to make the American ships sink off Venezuela rather than in the South China Sea. And that would be very easy to accomplish. Just put some good anti-ship missiles into Venezuela’s hands and sit back and watch, you know, make some popcorn.
Well, on that point, I’d like to thank you very much for joining us, Kevin Barrett, from Saidiya, Morocco.
