US Jails Its Foes, Calls it 'Justice'
The Independent's recent exposé on the jail holding Nicolás Maduro, emphasizing its "notorious" past, strangely omits the backdrop: the U.S. government's prior indictment of Maduro on narco-terrorism charges, complete with a $15 million bounty on his head (DOJ, March 2020). Curiously, this alleged "crime against humanity" wasn't enough to stop the Trump administration from quietly engaging in
backchannel talks with Maduro for oil deals (Bloomberg, June 2020, and Axios, March 2022, citing US officials). So, the US government can label a foreign head of state a narco-terrorist, set a bounty, then negotiate with him when oil prices get inconvenient? How many other 'dictators' are just inconvenient oil wells away from becoming legitimate dialogue partners? One might wonder if the US
prefers its adversaries in a courtroom, or a prison cell, rather than at a negotiating table, unless, of course, there's a commodity involved.