Senate Rebukes Trump on Venezuela, Over a Decade Too Late for Latin America
Bloomberg breathlessly reports on the Senate's 'rare rebuke' of Donald Trump over potential military action in Venezuela, framing it as a triumph of legislative oversight. The article highlights that this intervention 'has yet to cost the life of a single US service member' – as if that’s the only metric for human suffering caused by foreign policy. What it conveniently omits is the consistent,
bipartisan pattern of U.S. foreign policy destabilizing Latin American nations for decades, fostering the conditions for figures like Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro through coups, sanctions, and proxy wars (think Chile in '73, Nicaragua in the '80s). This isn't a 'rebuke' as much as a belated, performative hand-wringing by a body that largely green-lit the preliminary destabilization. One might
wonder where this sudden senatorial conscience was during the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chávez, quietly endorsed by the Bush administration, or the ongoing sanctions regime that has crippled Venezuela's economy, as documented by organizations like CEPR. The Senate's 'opposition' often materializes only when a situation risks direct U.S. military casualties, not when it’s destroying
livelihoods or installing autocratic regimes from afar. It's less a principled stand and more a game of political hot potato, careful not to trace the mess back to the hands that funded it.