Preliminary Notes on a Kidnapping

 

 

 

JEFFREY ST, CLAIR> 

+ The cocksure boast that the US will “run” Venezuela appears to be another Trumpian fantasy. It’s impossible to “run a country,” if you don’t have control of it, which the US doesn’t by any measure. The Maduro government remains in place and defiant, even with Maduro renditioned to New York City. Indeed, the attack appears to have only strengthened the resolve of the Venezuelan people, instead of inspiring the chimerical uprising Rubio led Trump to expect, much as Rumsfeld and Cheney deceived Bush into believing about Iraq.

+ Despite Trump’s claim that Delcy Rodríguez was “cooperative,” Venezuela’s vice-president, who was sworn in as the nation’s leader after Maduro was renditioned to the US, vigorously denied that she planned to help the U.S. government run the country. Instead, she asserted her own power as acting president and defiantly demonstrated the continuity of the Bolivaran Revolutionary government in the wake of the US attacks.

+ Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello: “Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations. We are outraged because in the end everything was revealed — it was revealed that they only want our oil.”

+ Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López forcefully rejected Trump and Rubio’s claim that Venezuela will be run by the US and demanded the return of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “Our sovereignty has been violated and breached. The [Venezuelan military] will guarantee the governability of the country … [and will] continue to employ all its available capabilities for military defense, the maintenance of internal order, and the preservation of peace.”

+ Trump responded to Rodríguez’s defiant stance with his usual boorish bombast when being confronted by a woman by threatening her with a fate worse than Maduro’s: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”