Tag: perpetual war

USS Gerald R. Ford and Strike Group Arrive to the Caribbean, as Venezuela’s Maduro Makes a Desperate Plea for Latin American Nations To ‘Unite for Peace’

The US military firepower concentrated off the coast of Venezuela, already massive, has increased dramatically.

Oh, how the times have humbled Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro!

When the US was struggling under feeble Joe Biden, an emboldened Maduro banged his war drums non-stop, credibly threatening to invade neighboring Guyana and seize its oil-rich Essequibo province.

But the first year of Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House and the subsequent siege of Venezuela with the largest military detachment since the Cold War led the ‘tyrant of Caracas’ to cynically become a self-professed ‘advocate for peace’.

So, Yesterday (10), Maduro was in Colombia for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), to make a desperate plea for unity of Latin American countries.

But today, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, USS Gerald R. Ford, and its entire strike group have arrived in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).

Pressure is building.

Latin Times reported:

“Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro called on Latin American countries to ‘proclaim the unconditional defense of our America as a peace zone’ as the U.S. continues its military campaign in the region.

[…] ‘The union of America is not a rhetorical gesture, but the condition of our liberty and key to our dignity’, Maduro said during a passage of the lengthy letter.”

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Hegseth Orders Pentagon to “Wartime Footing,” Tightens Ties With Industry

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), recently rebranded as the Department of War (DOW), is shifting its focus to a “wartime footing.” In a speech to a group of defense-industry executives and DOD officials on Friday, Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined a broad plan to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisition system and speed up weapons production:

Our objective is simple: Transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing, to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results…. American industry and spirit are begging to be unleashed to solve our most complex and dangerous war-fighting problems. We need to get out of our own way, out of your way, and enter into real partnership with you rather than overprescribe and decelerate your natural progress.

He later underscored:

We’re not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing. Building for victory should our adversaries FAFO [f*** around and find out].

The “transformation” was urgent, he said:

This is a 1939 moment, or hopefully a 1981 moment, a moment of mounting urgency. Enemies gather, threats grow. You feel it. I feel it. If we are going to prevent and avoid war, which is what we all want, we must prepare now.

Bureaucracy and Rumsfeld’s Shadow

Hegseth began his address by naming his “adversary” as being not on a battlefield, but inside the Pentagon. “The foe I’m talking about is much closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said. “Not the people, but the process; not the civilians, but the system.” He called it “one of the last bastions of central planning” that “with brutal consistency stifles free thought and crushes new ideas.”

“The modernization of the Department of War is a matter of life and death ultimately of every American,” declared the secretary.

Then came an unexpected admission. “The speech so far is not my own,” Hegseth said. “Those words are practically verbatim from a speech given by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 10, 2001.” He ended by again invoking Rumsfeld, urging the audience to build on “Rumsfeld’s vision.” That vision — outlined one day before 9/11 — was meant to “liberate” the Pentagon from bureaucracy. Instead, it ushered in two decades of war, privatization, and unchecked spending.

Rumsfeld’s name now carries a toxic legacy. His call to streamline defense spending became the justification for expanding it. He presided over the Iraq invasion, privatized logistics on an unprecedented scale, and normalized permanent war as policy.

By reviving that speech, Hegseth aligned himself not with meaningful reform to shrink the war machine, but with the model that made reform nearly impossible — one that equated efficiency with removing oversight and security with continuous mobilization.

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Venezuela Mobilizes Military Forces in Response to US Presence in Region

Following the U.S. Senate rejecting a resolution to block U.S. military actions against Venezuela, and the Pentagon confirming that the largest U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to Latin America, Venezuela is countering with its own two-day military mobilization.

Venezuelan Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino López announced a large-scale military mobilization during a news conference on Tuesday, calling it a defensive response to perceived threats from the United States.

“Almost 200,000 troops have been deployed throughout the national territory for this exercise, and I must say that this is not at the expense of the daily deployment carried out by the Strategic Operational Command,” Padrino López stated in the televised address.

Venezuela’s ministry of defense also posted about the exercise on social media.

The address, broadcast on state-run Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), outlined the expansion of President Nicolás Maduro’s “Independence Plan 200,” a civic-military strategy to combine conventional armed forces and police, as well as other security bodies, in the name of national defense.

Padrino López’s remarks took place amid a backdrop of expanded U.S. military activity in the Caribbean Sea, such as the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, and associated naval and aerial assets. Trump also authorized the CIA to operate covertly in Venezuela, he confirmed last month.

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Experts begged Kiev to pull troops out of encircled stronghold

Ukrainian civil groups and military experts have been pleading with the country’s leadership to withdraw its forces from the city of Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) before they become fully encircled by Russian troops, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Many insiders see little chance of holding the city, which is located in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic, due to critical manpower shortages and widespread fatigue among Ukrainian troops, the paper wrote.

Former Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Vitaliy Deynega warned last week that “despite the official bravado, the situation is more than complicated and less than controlled,” urging the country’s leadership to pull out “while it is possible.”

In recent weeks, Russian troops have encircled both Krasnoarmeysk (known in Ukraine as Pokrovsk) and Kupyansk in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, trapping roughly 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

Military experts and Ukrainian servicemen told FT that Kiev’s battlefield setbacks stem largely from a persistent manpower crisis that has plagued its forces since the escalation of the conflict in 2022.

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Officials Fear Permanent Israeli Occupation of More Than Half of Gaza

Reuters reported on Tuesday that European officials and other sources are concerned that, without more progress on the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, the so-called “yellow line” dividing Israeli-occupied Gaza from the rest of the Strip will become a de facto border, meaning there will be an indefinite Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory.

The report comes as the Trump administration is pushing for a plan to allow reconstruction only in the Israeli-occupied side of Gaza, which accounts for about 58% of the territory. The Atlantic has reported that the US is considering building housing on the Israeli side of the yellow line that could be used by Palestinians who have been “screened” for “anti-Hamas” sentiment.

Arab countries have been warning against the plan as they fear it will lead to a permanent Israeli occupation and expressed skepticism about the idea of Palestinians being willing to live on the Israeli side.

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An Inconvenient and Problematic Holiday

Smedley Butler was just referenced, and the Veterans For Peace chapter — the Smedley Butler chapter up here — that was the very first Veterans For Peace outfit that I ever came into contact with. At that point in 2009, as I was speaking out against the Afghan war, I’d spent 10 years in the Marine Corps, time in the State Department. I was a young man [I’ll add arrogant] and this idea of Veterans For Peace was kind of like, who are these loons? Who are these guys that I’ve got to now spend some time with?

And I was just absolutely enthralled with them, endeared with them—not just for their passion or for their experience, but because of their knowledge and because they put into practice, because they put into action what they had gone through. The mission of Veterans For Peace is to educate about the true costs of war. And that’s what Veterans For Peace does. That’s what chapters in Veterans For Peace, like the Smedley Butler chapter in Massachusetts, helped me do.

Because as I was starting to speak out against the war and going through this psychological, psychiatric, spiritual struggle with who I had once been, it was finding resonance, finding familiarity, finding fellowship and comradeship with members of Veterans For Peace that really helped me survive that process.

Easily the Most Profitable, Surely the Most Vicious

I want to go back to Smedley Butler for a bit. I know we have a youth group here, and they may not be familiar with Smedley Butler. He is the most decorated Marine in Marine Corps history. If the rules had been different, he’d be the most decorated service member across the entire US military’s history. Smedley Butler served for 33 years in the Marine Corps. He received two Medals of Honor. If the rules had been different, he would have received a third.

Following his service, he decried war. He broke from the silence that often accompanies [service members], particularly general officers, when they retire. He broke from that and he spoke out against not just war, but America’s imperialism.

I want to take a moment to read a couple of his more poignant or forceful quotes. Smedley Butler’s definition or commentary on war was that:

War is a racket. It has always been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

He spoke about his own career, his own service, what he actually did. And I’m going to read the longer quote here because I think it’s very important as we are on the verge of war in Venezuela, and I think a broader war possibly throughout Central and South America to achieve the Trump administration’s grand strategy of consolidation of control of the hemisphere.

Of his own career, Major General Butler said:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service. And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interest in 1916. I helped make Honduras ripe for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do is operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

You recognize his storyline, what he’s sharing there about what he actually was doing as a gangster for capitalism, as he described his military service. Juxtapose that with not just this administration, but going back decades, American administrations and their role, their intervention, their interference in Latin America. And you can see why — and I say this to the youth group that’s here — you can see why people like me, people like Dean, your teachers, we bang on about learning about history. As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.

Smedley Butler’s Medals of Honor—he received one for his action in Mexico, one for his action in Haiti. And again, if the rules had been different, he would have received a third one for his actions in China. And I wonder how many Americans know that 100 years ago or 110 years ago, we had men winning medals of honor for military action in Mexico or in China, let alone the rest of the [world].

I wanted to take that time to share about Smedley Butler because he is so instructive, not just his words that accurately describe American imperialism and American military service, but because it’s not distant, it’s not removed. This is congruent. This is a continuous line of history.

When I was [a kid] in the 80s, when I was the age of you guys in the youth group here, we [the US] were in Central America. Constantly there was this idea, this story about American troops may be going to [Central] America. American troops may be going to help in El Salvador or to maybe go to war in Nicaragua. And all the storylines were the same. Well, if we don’t do something to stop the communists in Nicaragua, then they’re going to take Guatemala next and they’re going to take Mexico after that. And next thing you know—I mean, it’s all the same storyline that gets repeated over and over again.

And so here we are now with this administration, of course, what looks like on the verge of carrying out military operations to overthrow the Venezuelan government while murdering people in speedboats, extrajudicially, unconstitutionally, and of course, threatening the rest of Latin America. We saw the news last week. The American government is making plans for military action in Mexico. So, 111 years after Smedley Butler receives his medal of honor in Mexico, we have troops lining up to [once again] do the same.

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Dick Cheney’s ghost has a playbook for war in Venezuela

Former Vice President Richard Cheney, who died a few days ago at the age of 84, gave a speech to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 2002 in which the most noteworthy line was, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

The speech was essentially the kickoff of the intense campaign by the George W. Bush administration to sell a war in Iraq, which it would launch the following March. The campaign had to be intense, because it was selling a war of aggression — the first major offensive war that the United States would initiate in over a century. That war will forever be a major part of Cheney’s legacy.

The Donald Trump administration’s escalation of confrontation with Venezuela displays disturbing parallels with the run-up to the Iraq War. In some respects where the stories appear to differ, the circumstances involving Trump and Venezuela are even more alarming than was the case with Iraq.

One similarity involves corruption of the relationship between intelligence and policy. Instead of policymakers using intelligence as an input to their decisions, they have tried to use scraps of intelligence publicly to make a case for a predetermined policy. This part of the story of the Iraq War I have recounted in detail elsewhere.

Cheney’s speech to the VFW preceded and in effect pre-empted work by the intelligence community on a classified estimate, which would become notorious in its own right, about Iraqi weapons programs. When Bob Graham, who died last year and in 2002 was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, became one of the few members of Congress to bother to read that estimate, he was so taken aback by how far short the intelligence community’s judgments were from what the administration was saying publicly that he voted against the resolution authorizing the war.

The Trump administration is using the same tactic of preemptive messaging from the top, regardless of what the intelligence agencies may be saying about Venezuela, that the Bush administration used regarding Iraq. Trump’s declarations about the regime of Nicolás Maduro have a definitive tone similar to Cheney’s “no doubt” formulation about Iraqi weapons programs.

Besides weapons of mass destruction, the other big issue that the Bush administration attempted to pin on Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime — capitalizing on the American public’s furor over terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — was a supposed “alliance” between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda. No such alliance existed, and the administration’s assertions on that subject were contrary to the intelligence community’s judgments.

The parallel with the current situation regarding Venezuela is especially clear, given the Trump administration’s assertions about the relationship between Maduro’s regime and certain gangs or drug cartels, which the administration equates with terrorist groups. Trump has declared that the gang most often mentioned, Tren de Aragua, is “operating under the control of” Maduro. This assertion is contradicted by the intelligence community’s judgments, as incorporated in a memorandum that is now available in redacted form.

The Bush administration not only disregarded intelligence judgments that did not support its case for war but also actively tried to discredit those judgments, and Cheney’s office was a part of this. For example, the policymakers tried to make life difficult for a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who, as a result of field research he performed for the intelligence community, was able to refute an administration assertion about Iraq buying uranium in Africa. The difficulties imposed on Wilson involved the career-ending outing of his wife, who was an intelligence officer under cover. Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted and sentenced to prison for obstructing justice and lying under oath in connection with that affair.

Cheney unsuccessfully lobbied President Bush to pardon Libby. But in a further connection to the present, Trump pardoned Libby in 2018.

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Approaching Veterans Day: Military Moral Injury, Violence, and the Parable of the Guinea Worm

Veterans? Who are they? And how in the world did they get a “day”? After all, here’s a curious fact: since World War II ended in victory, the United States, often seen as the greatest power on planet Earth, has indeed fought a seemingly endless series of wars from Korea and Vietnam in the last century to Afghanistan and Iraq in this one (and all sorts of more minor conflicts as well) without ever — yes, ever! — winning any of them. In May, it was clear enough that, at some deep level, Donald Trump had grasped that reality because he seemed eager to take November 11th away from America’s veterans and rename it “Victory Day for World War I” (with May 8th to be declared “Victory Day for World War II”). Admittedly, he backed down on that fast, but it still tells you something about this world of ours that, 80 years after World War II ended, when it comes to the country now heading for a trillion-dollar “defense” budget, there hasn’t been a victory in sight for decades.

And that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump and crew, whether in Somalia (yes, Somalia!), where his administration has launched a record 89 airstrikes so far this year, or in the Caribbean Sea, where it’s been ramping up American forces (including sending in an aircraft carrier task force) and making a habit out of blowing the boats of supposed drug smugglers out of the water there and in the Pacific Ocean, too, at least 18 of them as I was writing this (killing at least 70 people), and possibly preparing for an invasion not just of Venezuela, but also conceivably of various cities in this country.

And yes, you know that you’re in a new world when, with the government shutdown still ongoing, the president pays part of the salaries of the U.S. military with a $130 million donation from one of his billionaire supporters.

Welcome to his version of Veterans Day 2025. Now, let TomDispatch regular Kelly Denton-Borhaug give you some sense of how endless disastrous conflicts have affected America’s own troops.

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Honor Veterans by Ending Wars

One of my family’s favorite regular getaways is Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. The roller coasters are top notch, the shows are fun, and everyone is in a constant state of joy; it’s great. It’s also a veteran’s hangout. Every day when the park opens they honor all the veterans. We line up, march to the flag pole, and salute as we sing the anthem and say the pledge of allegiance. (I normally explain to people that the pledge is big-government socialist propaganda written by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, but I make an exception for Silver Dollar City). I’ve even been the one to carry and raise the flag. It’s always nostalgic and fun to talk with other veterans, especially since I’m often the youngest one there.

One fun-filled day I had just finished a coaster with one of my daughters when we had to run from some rain. My wife and kids ran indoors to get out of the rain and grab some lunch as I spotted a scruffy guy with a submarine hat. I knew from the submarine number on his hat it was an old boat. I struck up a conversation, motioned to my own hat, told him I was a nuke electrician, and asked him what he did. He told me how he mostly loved his time as a submariner, and even somehow got to work on “pig boat” for a while – the very old diesel submarines characterized by their relatively short but fat shape. I don’t remember his original navy job, but he was also a diver. Navy divers come from a proud tradition, of course. He told me about their mine-sweeping operations in the rivers of Vietnam, and how he’d often volunteer to stand watch topside so that his buddies could take liberty. He liked the fresh air and dark nights. That is, until he didn’t anymore.

Where they were, sabotage was a rare, but realistic threat. So, they had to stay vigilant. Like any foreign war, this task is often challenging because you’re surrounded by civilians just trying to get by in the midst of war. In this area, people would come to the waterfront and collect plastic trash where the currents would pool heaps of it together. One night, he saw someone come up to the edge of the sub. They ignored his yelling, commands, and even warning shots.

He ended up killing a 12-year-old girl. Then, he said soberly, “They even gave me an award for it.”

As the rain continued to drizzle on us he said, “So I put a shotgun in my mouth.”

I missed a few of the following details, but I wasn’t about to ask him to tell it again.

Seeing the pain in his eyes cut me to the heart. “I’m so sorry that happened to you” and after a pause I said, “I’m pretty anti-war.”

“Me too” he replied solemnly.

Even before that moment, him and his buddies knew the war was pointless, but being away from the shooting and knowing there was nothing they could do about it, they made the most of it and didn’t complain. Of course, this changed everything.

He told me that many people didn’t support veterans the way they do today, even though the wars are just as stupid. Nonetheless, he took his honorable discharge and new lifetime pension and decided to do something honorable with it. He went to DC, wore his dress blues (he laughed about how against the rules it was) and protested the hell out of the war till the very end.

Like him, I was relatively safe tucked away on a submarine hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean. Although we were never shot at, the Navy often really sucked. Since my enlistment has ended, I’ve known multiple vets or active-duty sailors who have killed themselves. Sometimes people suggest that if we all just care hard enough, wear ribbons, or change the borders on our Facebook photos that fewer Veterans might kill themselves. The numbers are insane: The VA says around 20 veterans and active duty servicemembers kill themselves every single day; but another exhaustive 4-year-long study shows that an alarming number of suicides don’t get reported as veterans, so the number for veterans alone is most likely closer to 24 a day.

Sure, a large piece of this can be chalked up to how stressful military life is and how difficult it can be for many servicemembers to transition to the normal world again, but many of us are convinced that one of the largest factors is the overall culture and the sense of waste and futility in “the system” and the missions. Both externally and inside the military, many have little faith in the leadership at the top and the missions they generate. This includes military and political leadership.

I want to be very clear: in the Navy we knew what we were signing up for: deployments, impossibly long-hours, sleepless nights, and incredibly demanding challenges. When it was necessary for the mission, we gave it our all and did it with pride. Honestly, I loved a lot of it. Operating a mobile nuclear power plant underwater is pretty cool. What did bother us though, was when “the suck” was so clearly unnecessary or politically motivated. How much more frustrating and depressing would it be to be sent across the globe to a desert, told to “win hearts and minds” and told to build a foreign government while blowing things up and shooting at people in a country known as “the graveyard of empires”? We spent 20 years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. It was clearly a futile, impossible task–a fool’s errand. Our leaders intentionally lied to us the whole time to keep it going. To top it off, soldiers couldn’t even really explain why they were there to their loved ones.

Missions void of clear goals still exist all over the world. Imagine being stationed in Somalia. Did you know we’ve bombed Somalia nearly 90 times this year already? I haven’t heard a single word in the mainstream press about Somalia. We’ve been in Somalia since 2001, and before that we were there from 1992 to 1994. Can you explain Somalia? Do you know who we’re bombing and why? I wonder how many soldiers have felt like the Medal of Honor recipient, Retired Major General Smedley Butler who wrote “War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Yet, when loss of life comes at the hands of the state, it seems many people don’t even blink. The state gets to get away with murder. Right now, we’re blowing up speed boats off the coast of a South American country because they might have drugs in them, as if these speed boats are about to cross 2000 miles of open ocean and sell drugs to kids on South Padre Island or Miami. Even if we suspect someone is selling drugs in our hometown now, the cops don’t get to go up to them and shoot them in the head without warning! It’s so obviously murder by any definition, even if there were drugs in the boats. The ethics don’t change just because it’s on the ocean far away. And yes, it was wrong when Obama and Biden did it, too.

This brings me back to the conversation with the old submariner. His words have stuck with me, not because of the horror he described – though that would haunt anyone – but because of what it revealed about the system that sent him there in the first place. He wasn’t broken by the enemy; he was broken by the mission. He did everything his country asked of him, and it still left him shattered.

And we’re still doing it.

We’re still creating veterans who will come home hollowed out by the same kind of futility. The details change, the geography changes, the justifications change – but the result is always the same: young men and women return from foreign lands with invisible wounds, told to be proud of serving their country in a war no one can explain and no one expected to win.

And we don’t just do it to our veterans, we do it to the veterans of our proxies.

Here’s another hard truth: you’re not supporting Ukrainian warriors by cheering on an unwinnable war. Not only are the Russians steadily advancing, but the demographics are horrifying.

According to Ukraine’s own Prosecutor General’s Office, more than 250,000 men have been charged with desertion since the war began–more than a quarter of a million! Their own media report on the bleak truth that they continue to experience a manpower crisis on the front, and that their soldiers suffer from exceedingly low morale. Furthermore, western mainstream media have completely ignored the absolutely brutal conscription practices going on in Ukraine. Men regularly get ripped off the street and shoved into vans or short busses. Hours upon hours of footage, often from a loved one’s cell phone, exists of this “busification” of Ukrainian men, often with their wives screaming in horror and trying to fight the gang of “recruiters” in vain. There are more than a handful of stories of Ukrainian conscripts even getting killed in the process.

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