The Trump administration is increasingly resembling a government previously abominated by the current US president as entangling, bumbling, and prone to fantasies. President George W. Bush was well versed in baseless existential threats stemming from Mesopotamia, supposedly directed by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. There was a critical problem in this assessment: in his dry drunk state, Bush was criminally wrong, proposing a doctrine in response to the attack by al-Qaeda on the United States on September 11, 2001 heavy on violence and slim on evidence.
The patchy formulation came to be known as the Bush Doctrine, permitting the United States to unilaterally and pre-emptively attack any country allegedly posing a threat to its security despite never evincing any genuine means of doing so. There would also be, Bush stated in his address to the nation, “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts [of 9/11] and those who harbor them.”
Such streaky reasoning eventually fastened upon Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), apparently at the ready to strike the US and its allies. If not Baghdad, then certainly an opportunistic terrorist proxy would be more than willing to deploy them. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush solemnly stated that “the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” Such weapons might be used “for blackmail, terror, and mass murder” or provided or sold “to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.”
As the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq proceeded with its increasingly bloody bill of sale, there were no WMDs to be found. Saddam, foolishly as things would have it, destroyed or disarmed those weapons he had made free use of in the Iran-Iraq War. This hardly mattered. There was shoddy intelligence aplenty, including false claims that Iraq had tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium powder from Niger, and cloudy lines of cooperation between Baghdad and al-Qaeda. With school boyish enthusiasm being shown by the evangelical UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the Saddam threat ballooned for Bush. Neoconservatives rejoiced at this chance of cratering, erasing and reforming the Middle East.
The Donroe Doctrine, childishly envisaged and clumsily applied, has an unmistakable analogue with that of Bush. In repurposing the Monroe Doctrine for the Western Hemisphere, excluding threatening foreign interests in Latin America and extinguishing governments adversarial or unsympathetic to the United States, Trump scorns the evidence. A fundamental reason for abducting President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, by way of example, was accusing him of being a narco-terrorist amenable to nasty foreign interests. Elevating his stature as a threat, he was accused of being a figure of the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns).
This pattern stretches back to the first Trump administration, when a grand jury indictment alleged that Maduro, along with other officials, “participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy between the Venezuelan Cártel de Los Soles and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.” Five years later, when the Treasury Department retrieved the initial text, the Cartel was designated a “terrorist organization.” Come November 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the State Department to do the same.
With an eerie sense of the past cantering into the present, we find the US Justice Department conceding that there was no link between Maduro and this sinister cartel. This stands to reason, given that the group does not exist as a tangible organisation. The allegation has long been contentious, but those close to Trump were not willing to be swayed by that dullest compendium of subject matter unfashionably called “the facts”.
Believers in virgin births, tooth fairies and Sky Gods sometimes intrude into the making ofAmerican foreign policy, and Rubio, in justifying extrajudicial killings of those on board alleged narco-vessels in the Caribbean Sea by US military forces had this to say: “We will continue to reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats that are bringing drugs toward the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organisations, including the Cartel de los Soles.”
The 2020 indictment mentioned the cartel no fewer than 32 times. The new indictment makes a mere two references to a term that has ceased to be an entity and become a concept, revised as a “patronage system run by those at the top.” It does not feature as an organisation along with the list of alleged “narco-terrorists” outlined in the fourth paragraph.
Those versed in the slippery argot of drug trafficking in Latin America have concluded that the Cartel de los Soles is a colloquialism minted by Venezuelan media to out despoiled officials sporting the sun insignia on their uniforms. It became a matter of usage in the 1990s, making it less a description of organisational reality than identifying a broader system of corruption.
From the outset, Venezuelan figures such as interior and justice minister Diosdado Cabello dismissed the cartel as the product of a fevered imagination. In August last year, he coolly remarked that US officials, when bothered, would name the target of their indignation “the head of the Cartel de los Soles.” The organisation makes no appearance in the United Nations’ annual World Drug Report, preferring to reference Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, and Brazil’s Primeiro Comando Capital (PPC) and Comando Vermelho (CV). The US Drug Enforcement Agency’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment makes reference to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua, “a violent criminal organization founded between 2012 and 2013” that “mainly operates within Venezuelan migrant communities” in the United States. No favours are done naming the Cartel de los Soles, however.
The rewritten indictment against Maduro reveals how presidential doctrines can be used to force evidence upon a Procrustean bed, sawing or extending it to fit the set dimensions of a dogma. The crime of aggression against Iraq in 2003 was based upon forged evidence, implausible links and flimsy assumptions. The crime of aggression against Venezuela on January 3 reprised the performance. Instead of a uranium hoax, we got the Cartel of the Suns.
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Thanks Binoy for an interesting perspective.
The Bush administration was able to get away with it because of the complicity of corporate media. We’ve come to expect it from the corporate media, but expect independent, impartial and accurate news from our national broadcasters.
It’s an expectation that our national broadcasters are increasingly failing to meet. The BBC coverage of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in all its barbarity and depravity has been a national scandal. Our ABC coverage hasn’t been much better.
Owen Jones produced a video exposing the BBC’s treatment of the Trump administrations plans to steal Greenland, highlighting and criticizing the BBC for referring to it as ‘Using American military to acquire Greenland’, as if Greenland were some shares on a stock exchange.
But that pales into insignificance in comparison to our ABC’s normalizing the kidnapping of an elected leader of a sovereign country as “Donald Trump has made clear that he wants the United States to take Greenland.
In the wake of the special forces operation to bring Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the US to face drug trafficking and weapons charges,” as if Greenland is being offered to Trump, or is just sitting around waiting for someone to take it, and framing the kidnapping of Maduro in the terms of the Trump administration’s bogus (Trumped up) claims. Together with “So how can the US go about achieving the president’s goal?”; not a breach of international law, but a presidential goal, like building a ballroom in the East Wing.
Last night on the appalling ABC 7.30 Report, on their self-proclaimed in depth (but shallow, biased and linguistically distorted) on-the-ground report ‘Tensions rise in Columbia’, Kamin Gock said in his voice-over, “Since Venezuela’s now deposed President Nicholas Maduro rose to power …”
‘Deposed’! A cunning twist on the traditional usage, where a high ranking official or leader has been from within the sovereign state brought down to face internal prosecution.
Gock could have used ‘kidnapped’ or ‘captured and renditioned’ via US extraterritorial deadly force.
Ongoing the ABC has framed the Venezuelan episodes as justified, given the opinions of ‘native’ Venezuelans, mostly the wealthy, including those that have beforehand emigrated (likely having been vetted and encouraged by the CIA).
The ABC conveniently ignores that in 2013, after Chavez death, Venezuelan opinion poll results favored Maduro, and after his election a Venezuelan electoral commission audit and the Supreme Court declared the election bona fide.
Similarly it ignores that after massive US sanctions on Venezuela under Chavez, continuing through Maduro’s regime, Venezuela’s economy was brought to its knees, giving rise to internal conflict and doubt about the realization of the Bolivarian Revolution ideals – exactly what the US intended.
Venezuela’s foreign policy stances during Maduro’s political term included ending relations with Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China, support for Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, breaking off diplomatic ties with Israel during the 2008–09 Gaza War, recognizing and establishing diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine, a turnaround in relations with Colombia in 2008 and again in 2010. And later maintaining cordial relations with China and Russia. It is of little surprise that the US and the ‘West’ wanted rid of him.
The ‘West’ piled on its sanctions, crippling Venezuela and deepening and broadening poverty amongst its ordinary citizens. Maduro, was being assailed from every direction.
Wikipedia states, amongst other things:
“The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence from the Spanish and to form part of the first federal Republic of Colombia (Gran Colombia). It separated as a fully sovereign country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. From 1958, the country had a series of democratic governments, as an exception where most of the region was ruled by military dictatorships, and the period was characterized by economic prosperity.
Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest …”.
Can’t imagine who orchestrated the ‘Economic Shocks’.
Venezuela has an enduring complexity. But it modernized to a sophisticated state. But for the hostile interference of the ‘West’ (with eyes on its oil), it may have attained ‘democratic’ stability. Instead, the ‘West’ has plunged it into widespread poverty, and a fleeing of valuable human capital to the arms of its divisive and greedy oppressors.
It is classic imposition of imperial oppression, coercion, and now military invasion. The horrendous colonialist era revisited.
It’s another day of observing the twisted bowellery of orthodox media on world affairs, using distorted language and concepts and perhaps indoctrinating people wrongly, even deliberately, on deep matters deserving accuracy, honesty, professional skill. (waste of rant here) So, Donald Dogshit-Liar has said he is motivated by “morals” to thieve, lie, threaten, oppress and give orders about all this criminality. Nothing in USA daily life seems to halt declines and horrors, with murders, deportations, intrusions, dictatorial oppressions and any exploitations for the “winning team” of supporting fellationistas. It is a horror for the decent USA citizens and all others affected, to have to say that the USA is riddled now with Yankinazis, maggoty misfits. Do you want a glass of impure filth, fellow citizens, with ICE?