By Walt Zlotow
The US has spent the entire 21st century toppling regimes it hates. Every one up to Saturday’s removal of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro has ended in failure.
2001 Afghanistan
President George W. Bush kicked off the 21st century by changing out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. America could not confront the real culprit of 911, ally Saudi Arabia, so we picked an easy scapegoat to extract our revenge. It only took 5 weeks to topple the Taliban, allowing installation of a US puppet government. Result? Taliban regrouped to win their country back. Took 20 years but this time it was the hated Yankees ousted, killing 2,461 Americans in the process. America left the failed state of Afghanistan with over 150,000 dead and Afghanistan’s 42 million people worse off than before American’s criminal regime change operation.
2003 Iraq
Bush turned next to hated Iraq to one up Poppy Bush’s failure to oust Saddam Hussein 1991. His regime change turned Iraq into a failed state with over 500,000 Iraqis and 5,984 American soldiers and contractors killed. Over 100,000 Americans were injured in body and mind from in a totally made up, senseless war. Twenty-three years later the US is still defiling Iraqi sovereignty with a couple of thousand soldiers stuck in the Iraq war roach motel.
2011 Libya
George W. Bush’s successor Barack Obama got into regime change business to knock off Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. He employed so called defense alliance NATO to bomb Libby during the Libyan civil war to tip the scales against Gaddafi. Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated, “We came, we saw, he died”, failing to mention this death resulted from a bayonet to the butt. The US achieved the complete opposite of its intended goal of Libyan and regional stability by turning Libya into one of the most chaotic, failed states on the planet.
2013 Sryia
Just 2 years later Obama was at it again, this time intervening in the Syrian civil war, supporting jihadist terrorists to depose hated Syrian President Bashar Assad. Neither Obama nor successor Trump could complete the task finally achieved by President Joe Biden in his last 2 months. US intervention was primarily designed to rid puppet master Israel of one of its regional hegemonic rivals. By prolonging the Syrian civil war for 11 years, the US contributed mightily to the civil war’s half million deaths. Led by new US pal, former US designated al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa, Christians, Druze and Alawites are being systematically hunted down and killed by the US backed al-Sharaa regime.
2022 Russia
The US and NATO spent 14 years under 4 presidents provoking Russia to invade Ukraine to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The US knew Russia would eventually invade; indeed, also knew Ukraine could not prevail against the Russian goliath. Didn’t matter. The US believed the war would so weaken Russia it might topple despised President Vladimir Putin, bringing in a Russian puppet amenable to US influence. Four years on Russia and Putin are stronger than ever, pivoting away from Europe to the non-aligned world seeking independence from a war and sanctions crazed America. Ukraine is now a failed state near totally dependent on US, NATO treasure to survive. A fifth of its land is gone forever, soon to be joined by its last warm water port. Looks like the only regime to be removed is Ukraine’s, not Russia’s.
2026 Venezuela
In his first solo adventure in regime change, President Trump kicked off 2026 with a lightning assault that snatched Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro out of Venezuela to face a Trump style show trial in the US. Trump and his war cabinet are positively ecstatic about completing America’s two decade crusade to snuff out socialism in Venezuela and gobble up its 300 billion barrels of heavy crude in the process. But they might look back at America’s 21st century regime change failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Russia, and ponder whether they’re simply following previous administrations down the rabbit hole of regime change failure.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn, IL
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On provoking ruSSia, yes, Ukraine did that. Imagine a former vassal aspiring to become a prosperous progressive democracy prosecuting corruption (inherited from the muSScovite empire). No self-respecting dicktator (even a midget one) could tolerate such provocation – it may give his livestock ideas.
Hotspringer
You do realize that capitalizing the ss’s in your post actually undermines your own argument, don’t you?
27 million Russians died because of the Nazis in WW2. To associate the Nazis with present-day Russia doesn’t make any sense at all.
What’s more, it is unlikely in the extreme that Russia would like to have a country ruled by, or heavily influenced by, neo-Nazis on its border. It is well known that Ukraine society included a significant number of neo-Nazis.
Gonggongche
Crap! poo tin’s empire has a lot more neo nazis than Ukraine. ruSSians were nazi’s faithful allies for the first half of the war.
Russia does have neo-Nazis, I was wrong about that, but:
“MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. The vast majority of polled Russians – 88% – opined that there are organization working in Ukraine that adhere to Nazi ideology and that threaten Russia, says Mikhail Mamonov, head of the political analysis division of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM). According to Mamonov, the poll took place on April 18 and covered 1,600 adult respondents.”
TASS is not a source I would place a lot of trust in and if you can provide a more reliable source, I’d be happy to look at it. However, in that absence of any other survey of Russian sentiment towards Nazis in Ukraine and the likelihood of success of Russian government propaganda towards Ukraine it is unlikely in the extreme Russia would be happy about a country ruled by, or heavily influenced by, neo-Nazis on it border.
Russian alliance with Nazi Germany at the beginning of the second world war is irrelevant to attitudes towards Nazis after 27 million Russians died because of the Nazis.
I read British, German and French reporting and don’t believe anything until th3e Kremlin denies it. And certainly not what any ruSSians say, brainwashed by 25 years of the dicktators TV propaganda.
Can we take that as a ‘no, I don’t have an alternative survey of any reliability?’ British, German and French reporting is no more reliable on this matter than TASS, they all have bias on this matter.
Uhm ….. as an interested amateur historian of WWII having an incomplete knowledge of Russian military actions during that period, I remember that Stalingrad ended the war with the loss of about 9 million Russian lives.
It took English historians until the 80s to acknowledge that their military efforts were largely ineffective despite the post war propaganda movies.
It seems most unlikely then that any neo-nazi grouping in European governments outside Germany would be tolerated.