Ilhan Omar has become a thorn in the side to the many benefactors of the seamless procession of regime-change wars of the past two decades. Those benefactors now have their sights set on Venezuela, and have unfurled the narrative they pray will set the Imperial War Machine full-force upon that civilian population. That narrative is composed of a variation on a theme of the evils of socialism, of which there are many, but Venezuela’s plight is far more complex than simply socialism wrecking the country. For one, Maduro is not a dictator. Socialism or not, Venezuelans elected him, and love him. Socialism has done damage to the country, but Trump’s effort to topple Maduro and install a puppet regime has led to the imposition of sanctions, a policy that has never forced a foreign leader from power, but has done plenty of horrific damage to the most vulnerable civilians. The economic sanctions, which have been ongoing for the past two years, have caused tens of thousands of deaths, according to a new report released from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. This U.S.-created humanitarian crisis was plainly recognized as such by Ilhan Omar, who, while appearing on Democracy Now!, said,

“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela, and we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today…This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

The architects of this foreign devastation came with knives drawn, with VP Mike Pence accusing Omar of choosing “socialism over freedom”. Omar shot back, saying that, “Just as in interventions past, those who oppose war are labeled supporters of dictators and haters of ‘freedom’. We saw this playbook in Iraq. The situation in Venezuela is dire and the Trump Admin is making it worse. We must support diplomacy, not war.”

Much to the chagrin of Trump and his cabal of war pigs , Venezuelans love Maduro. What they don’t love is the world’s foremost superpower poking its nose where it doesn’t belong. That includes shopping around for useful idiots, political pawns they can use as warm bodies to inhabit the puppet government they so desperately wish to install. Juan Guaido has been D.C.’s puppet of choice, due to the fact that in him reside all the best qualities of a foreign puppet: opportunism, greed, gullibility, a conspicuous lack of integrity, a willingness to sell out his own country for a shot at power, and generalized idiocy.

Could you imagine if Russia, or some other foreign power openly conspired with a member of Congress to overthrow an elected leader here? That member would most likely be strung up. That Guaido walks around a free man, holding political rallies in the middle of the day in Caracas, is a testament to the very lack of authoritarianism that Washington D.C. so wishes existed in that South American country. Guaido is puppet whose usefulness is running low, and D.C. is beginning to realize that he may now be more valuable dead than alive, and would surely prefer a nice, clean assassination on the part of the Maduro regime. To their credit, they surely recognize this imbecile for what he is, a traitor to his country. Traitor, due to his open calls for his government’s overthrow at the behest of a foreign power, and actual, real-world collusion with U.S. officials to fast-track his status as President Puppet of Venezuela.

There are too few who criticize the U.S. foreign policy of making corpses of entire nations, of irreversibly ruining the existing social order, unleashing chaos, and sowing the seeds of future wars. Conversely, there are far too many that promote and advocate for never-ending, overseas wars. The political establishment in D.C. speaks with one voice on the topic. Their only concern is their ability to brand the war in such a way that it will be swallowed by enough people to get the war going. The pharmaceutical industry, in its pursuit of profits from the sick and gullible, engages in “disease branding”. Basically, after creating a drug, they look at the side-effects, and then conjure a disease out of thin air that comports with those very side-effects. And so it is with murderous and expensive U.S. military campaigns abroad, rebranded as “humanitarian” to better sell it to a gullible public.

“It has to be this way, or else.”

-Johnny Rotten