But that doesn’t mean it controls everything or even most of what the regime is doing. Yet
The United States is now ‘running’ Venezuela after Maduro ouster
“We’re in charge of everything. We’re in charge of everything… We’re going to run it. We’re going to fix it…. Well, we’re gonna run everything. We’re gonna run it, fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time. The main thing you have to fix, it’s a broken country.”
President Donald Trump, on Air Force One on Sunday night, had a remarkable back and forth with the traveling press corps about Operation Absolute Resolve, which captured and arrested dictator Nicholas Maduro and brought him to the United States, and which included his statements above about Venezuela.
Many people purport either not to understand what President Trump said on Sunday on his return flight, or during his Saturday morning statement and press conference or, as with the case of New York Times reporter Lulu Navarro, to assert that if the president and his administration “say they run the country, then whatever happens there now they own.”
TRUMP’S VENEZUELA STRIKE SPARKS CONSTITUTIONAL CLASH AS MADURO IS HAULED INTO US
Navarro continued in her online X exchange with me, “That is the consequence of saying they ‘run’ the country while repression continues.” She added in another post “that the repression the regime is continuing to exert is now the responsibility of the US. They have toppled the leader but left the regime and its heinous actors in place to consolidate power.”
While Ms. Navarro and I had a cordial exchange — she is simply wrong about how our legal system would assign responsibility for “heinous acts” done in Venezuela post-Madura, she is also wrong about what President Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio have repeatedly stated.
The secret police are still there, as are the “chavistas,” as is a corrupt and compromised military. It is hardly likely that every Iranian, Russian or Chinese operative has left the country in the days since Maduro was spirited away in the remarkable display of military might by the U.S.
It is very much a broken country, just as was the Soviet Union was in 1989. Communism never works except to spread suffering far and wide and enrich the very few atop the system. “The warm embrace of collectivism” has always meant a massive vise-like grip on every person not inside the regime atop the various “peoples paradises.” Totalitarians are always evil. They always abuse people.
The United States put a quarantine on Venezuela’s oil exports, but it controls that quarantine. As Secretary Rubio noted repeatedly on Sunday, the country’s ability to store its own oil has nearly reached its capacity. On Tuesday, President Trump announced that Venezuela may export $2 billion worth of crude oil to the U.S. “The agreement is a strong sign that the Venezuelan government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to U.S. oil companies or risk more military intervention,” according to Reuters. The U.S. did not operate the well, load the tankers or send them on their way to U.S. refineries, but it surely is “running” this redirection of Venezuelan oil exports under the embargo, but permitted as an exception to the blockade.
This is not hard. Step-by-step, the U.S. is guiding the reconfiguration of the regime’s operations. The U.S. is “running” the country, but has not occupied it. No doubt other important steps are taking place beyond the view of the public. After the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Libya’s dictator at the time, Moammar Gadhafi — who feared a similar invasion — invited the U.S. into his country to take possession and remove his vast quantities of WMD, which happened and did so in secret. As with Libya then, so with Venezuela now: The U.S. is running the country at a very high level. It is not, however, responsible for governing the country as we were in Iraq when our military invaded and occupied Saddam’s nightmare of a country-turned-vast-prison-camp.
