By Jamal Kanj
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped by the United States. (Photo: via Donald Trump Truth Social account)
Kidnapping Maduro from his bedroom is not about democracy. It is an exercise of power on behalf of oil profiteers and Israeli strategic interests.
US President Donald Trump is once again surrounded by a cast of political lightweights and constitutionally hollow obedient courtiers on one end, and Israel-first operatives on the other. They run US foreign policy where constitutional restraints are subverted, and American power is used as a blunt instrument to advance agendas that are neither democratic nor American. This is not chaos or mismanagement, it’s planned.
What is being presented as “drug enforcement” against Venezuela’s president is a premeditated act of war orchestrated, in part, to advance Israeli strategic interests and the profits of multinational oil corporations. It is a manipulation of US power in the service of foreign actors, with consequences that threaten global stability and undermine international law.
The most disastrous US foreign policy failures of the past quarter century in Iraq, Libya, and Syria were not driven by American interests. They were Israeli wars, sold to American officials through pressure, cooked intelligence, and a compliant political class.
The Iraq War was designed in the dens of the Pentagon by Israel-first neocons who fabricated the weapons of mass deception to drag America into a made-for-Israel war. Libya was obliterated under the pretext of humanitarian intervention. Syria was turned into a prolonged proxy battlefield. The promised prosperity, stability, democracy, or security never materialized. One thing materialized: delivering Israel’s objectives with American money and the lives of American soldiers.
Today’s war threats against Iran are following the same script. A war manufactured carefully and cynically by Israel-first American Jewish billionaires such as Miriam Adelson, and journalist advocates bought and employed by Larry Allison. These actors have exerted extraordinary influence over Trump, and even audaciously called for violating the US Constitution by floating a third term run, all to serve of Israeli strategic interests.
Trump branded Maduro a “drug trafficker” to justify his kidnapping, while pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández, a former Honduran president and a US-indicted cocaine kingpin who ran a narco‑state shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
Could it be because Hernández was pro-Israel, but Maduro was not? Maduro dared to condemn Israeli genocide in Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank.
This has nothing to do with American interests. It is another Israeli account to settle with the president of Venezuela. These wishes were expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu—an internationally indicted war criminal welcomed in the White House—during his interview with FOX just three days before the illegal American operation in Venezuela. Not surprisingly, Israel was possibly the only country that praised Trump for kidnapping Maduro.
If Trump can be the bully of the “neighborhood” and topple or coerce regimes that do not comply with his political and financial desires. Why not for Russia or China in their alleys? What stops China from “trumping up” charges in its courts against Taiwanese political leaders? What stops Russia from kidnapping political figures it deems hostile under the guise of law enforcement?
In fact, China has a far stronger historical, geographic, and political claim to Taiwan than the United States has to Venezuela, more than 2,500 miles from American shores. Russia, likewise, has greater strategic ties to countries in its backyard than Washington does in Latin America.
Enforcing international law by local courts only leads to the collapse of international norms. Countries should not be able to use their legal system to supersede international law and the UN Charter. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the only body that can indict and issue arrest warrants. Claiming a law enforcement operation does not make it lawful, especially when the White House welcomes a war criminal and refuses to enforce the ICC arrest warrant.
Unfortunately, the attempt to topple Maduro is not a one-off in Latin America. Washington has a bloody history of intervening in and regime change, propping up dictators, and removing democratically elected leaders. Unlike this case, most were done under the CIA clandestine operations. To name just a few, and not in any order: The 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, the 1971 coup in Bolivia, Chile military coup in 1973. The CIA coups in Ecuador between 1960 and 1963, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Israel’s influence over US foreign policy has become so pervasive that America is perceived as a rattler saber wielded to settle Israeli scores with other countries, sanctioning the ICC, and even suppressing local dissent against Israel. By conflating American national interests with Israel’s strategic objectives, Washington is inviting international chaos and serving Israel by diverting global attention from Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
And the American taxpayer is paying for all of it. Since 2001, the US has spent more than eight trillion dollars on made-for-Israel wars. This is enough to give 32 million American families free homes ($250,000 each).
Not passing a judgment on the legitimacy of Maduro or his style of governance, that is for the Venezuelan people alone to decide. But an administration that openly expresses admiration for “friendly” dictators, where free press and elections do not exist, has neither the credibility nor the moral standing to decide on legitimate systems of government.
Kidnapping Maduro from his bedroom is not about democracy. It is an exercise of power on behalf of oil profiteers and Israeli strategic interests. The United States does not advance freedom in Latin America by violating international law, nor does it serve Americans when the US army is outsourced to serve the desires of the Israeli lobby, Zionist implants in the administration, and Israel-first donors.
– Jamal Kanj (jamalkanj.com) is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications. He contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.
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