Moderately Conflicted on Conflict with Maduro

I don’t want us playing world cop.  I personally have gone, and while I ate up the mission at first, it soured around the time some of my friends were killed (I identified them and signed for their uh receipt at the big military hospital there), and my second tour was an exercise in finding a job I could do with all my heart.  All I did was take care of our people, which I can do all day long.  No “host-nation” partnering, no nation-building, no joint security tomfoolery; just take care of our people over there.  Happy to do so, because the whole thing was a piece of refuse, and I wanted to take care of people who thought the way I had on my previous deployment, the way others had taken care of me.

It is right and good to oppose Russia’s thug tactics, but I greatly dislike the Hee-Haw “Hit ‘im again!” playing at war.  Only retards are eager to breach the safeguards that keep NATO proper from remaining non-combatant.  I support Israel’s fight to survive and to thrive, and I support Taiwan’s bid to remain out of the maw of a failing but viciously dangerous Red Chinese communism.

Those being said, why can we not fix our own border?  The military refuses, and says that’s an internal matter, the CBP and DHS’ problem.  I disagree.  It is exactly a matter for our Army until they FAIL and the problem sets foot across the border, which should not happen.  What on Earth is our Army even for, in our “modern” nation-state world, if not first and foremost to defend our own border?  Is our Army solely an instrument of overseas foreign policy?  If so then A) base it solely overseas, and B) transfer it under the Department of State.  Yes, stupid ideas both, but necessary implications of the Army being solely an instrument of foreign policy.

It’s not as though we have the sea or air lift capacity to rapidly deploy a sizeable force.  If they only matter overseas, then station them overseas.  I’ve been stationed overseas, and it works.  So we have this army stationed here which is forbidden to defend “here”, and which cannot get to any “there” without a lumbering (and now failure-prone) exercise of creaking logistics just to get on the ground, much less set up to fight.  Is this army now aimed at the population of the United States?

Station our Army on the border.  Make the entire southern border one big long Army base and court-martial anybody who allows the perimeter to be breached.  Make the entire northern border a looser zone of control but utterly the responsibility of the Army.

And if we’re not going to do that, then I don’t give a flying hoot about its farther-flung “responsibilities,” which will not be met anyway.  How well did any of this turn out for Iraq or Afghanistan, or even our interests (Hey!) in the region?  Just because a failure takes twenty years and eight trillion dollars, that doesn’t somehow make it a sucess.  Instant failure, protracted failure, failure on the cheap and at great expense, unforeseen failure or obvious, long-predicted failure; these are our options for military adventures, and at no point is our southern border secured!  I’ll be blunt and unpleasant — if our series of administrations will send young men out at risk of life and limb, then at least let it be for the country proper, not for vague buzzword-bingo connections to “deeply held values”.  You know what I care about more than the lofty core values of any military service?  Not getting slaughtered by MS-13 or blown up by Hamas or crippled by some Rwandan maniac.  Same goes for my family.  So the rest of the world can kiss my backside until we are prepared to defend our border.

Which is where Venezuela and New World Communism come into.  Maduro the commie, like most commies, enjoys support from China.  Like it or not, the Cold War is already in our back yard, digging trenches and preparing the inevitable assault on the doghouse and the back porch.  Maduro is now, by apparently multiple-source reporting, rounding poeple up and trucking them to concentration (“re-education!”) camps if they are lucky.  Now is a time of positive movement in South America.  Milei is conducting a masterclass in “Hell no” rejection of a bankrupting nanny-state socialism, and Venezuela has by all accounts except Maduro himself just elected a non-Communist, non-Socialist.  This is all somebody else’s business and not ours, except…  what if the South Americans are on the cusp of producing conditions on the ground that could not only potentially reduce the flow of invaders to our own border, but even take up some of the flow, and inspire / influence their neighbors to do better?  A Latin American renaissance!  Few things could be better for our southern border than this.

Well, short of a couple thousand miles of sandbags and .50 cals.  I am not joking about that.  But this is never going to happen no matter how seriously I mean it.  I’m driven, not stupid.

So I’m for a limited support of the “good guys” down south.  Given my preferences, we would see South and Latin-American countries get behind their own regional leader and intervene, and I would have no problem providing large support.  But not one US boot on the ground as part of that specific effort, not one bomb dropped, not one shell or TLAM fired from offshore.  This project will never work if the South Americans cannot manage it, and will become a quagmire if we wade in.

So I can support it — from a distance.

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One Response to Moderately Conflicted on Conflict with Maduro

  1. MJBubba says:

    Venezuela makes me sad. It was a beautiful place.
    In no way should America get involved so long as Democrat Deep Staters rule in Washington.
    There will be no hope for Venezuela if America fails to re-elect Trump. Not because Trump would do anything for Venezuela, but because all possible paths to Venezuelan recovery require the presence of a strong America to keep Old World adventurers away.
    Is the Monroe Doctrine still valid ?

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