You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison
January 2, 2026.
The United States v. Iran
We start off this year with the no more forever wars president threatening to intervene in Iran.
Iran is a bad actor, without a doubt, but what we'd particularly note here is that Trump's policy of intervention is beginning to look a lot like the Neo Con policy. A person can like that, or not, but it's not what he was promising at all. I'd heard various Trump supporters cite the "no more forever wars" line as (one of) their reasons for supporting him.
January 3, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and took Maduro and his wife prisoner.
No Declaration of War exists, of course, and there's no Congressional authorization for the use of force. This is, therefore, an illegal operation.
The news is too early to really make any definitive predictions about how this will turn out. Wars, however, tend to end when the attacked party decides they are over. Maybe this will tip the scales in Venezuela and things will change. Or maybe his followers dig in and carry on, in which case we are now committed to a wider conventional war, and perhaps a following guerilla war.
U.S. Delta Force seizes Venezuelan leader, sources say
US military captures Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro after striking military sites
The US Is Attempting Regime Change In Venezuela
Cont:
Trump's comments on the raid on Maduro:
As usual, when he reads a prepared statement, he sounds awful. While called to address the illegal attack in Venezuela, it meandered into the usual Trump mental mush addressing various Trump favorite topics and fantasies. Use of the National Guard in various states ended up being addressed by the clearly senile illegal occupant of the Oval Office.1
Trump has made it clear the U.S. intends to occupy Venezuela, apparently forgetting that simply seizing the head of state doesn't amount to a full surrender of anyone opposing a U.S. presence. This will require thousands of U.S. troops on a continent in which we've never had boots on the ground. People aligned with Maduro have no reason to cooperate with the US at all, and have plenty of reason not to.
Inside Venezuela there were protests over the U.S. action. Outside of the country Venezuelan expats celebrated the news.
Trump also made it clear that he intends to reverse the fifty year old nationalization of Venezuelan oil. Either Trump, or more likely somebody in his regime, has a real pre World War One view of the world, as this example of imperialism and gunboat diplomacy makes clear. Trump actually cited the Monroe Doctrine and his new security priorities.
Trump justified the action on the basis of ending Venezuelan drug exports to the U.S.
By way of a set of predictions, and knowing more about the use of military force that Donald Trump does, if the U.S. isn't in complete control of the country within thirty days, this will evolve into a guerilla war requiring no less than 100,000 U.S. troops. If the U.S. hasn't turned the country over to Venezuelans within one year, it'll evolve into a low grade guerilla war requiring no less than 50,000 boots on the ground.
January 4, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
So where are we now?
Yesterday it looked like, for awhile, that effectively what the US had done was to have mounted a coup of the Venezuelan government with the silent complicency of Venezuelan VP Delcy Rodríguez, sidestepping Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado Parisca.
Then came Trump's babbling senile statement about the operation.
Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as the country's President. She's just as left wing and Maduro, and she immediately indicated that she regard Maduro as the President and that she's not cooperating with the US.
So, what was achieved? We don't know, but unless we're going to do a full scale invasion of Venezuela, all we may have done is replace one left wing leader with another.
A bit closer to home, sort of:
Well, of course they did. Was there any doubt?
January 5, 2026
Yemeni Civil War
Saudi backed forces retook Mukalla.
Nigeria
Gunmen killed 30 in Kasuwan-Daji.
Syria
Britain and France carried out a joint airstrike late Saturday on an underground facility where members of the ISIL were located.
United States v. Venezuela
Pope Leo XIV commented on Venezuelan independence yesterday, stating:
The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration and lead us to overcome violence and to undertake paths of justice and peace, safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, ensuring the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution, respecting the human and civil rights of each person and of all, and working to build together a serene future of collaboration, stability, and concord, with special attention to the poorest who suffer because of the difficult economic situation.
Columbian guerilla groups Unión Camilista Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) issued a warning to the US about the US having a presence in Venezuela.
FARC is a Communist guerilla movement while the ELN is a "Catholic Communist" or Liberation Theology guerilla movement. Columbia is their main focus, but they operate in Venezuela.
While the raid has been portrayed as lacking casualties on the U.S. side, U.S. troops were in fact wounded and have been air evacuated to the U.S.
Something being reported this morning:
January 6, 2022
United States v. Venezuela
Wyoming’s Barrasso, Lummis back Trump’s Venezuelan invasion, Hageman silent: Rep. Hageman, who’s running to replace Lummis, has been mum on the military strikes and Maduro’s capture.
Hageman's failure to say anything is really interesting. MAGA boosted the platform of "no more forever wars" but the US has been fighting everywhere, and is threatening to attack a NATO ally, Denmark, over Greenland, an act that would be deeply immoral and flat out insane. Indeed, the fact that the country is being lead by a mad man is increasingly clear, with most Republicans doing nothing about it.
Wyoming has had a strong commitment to the military. Indeed, an overly strong one as not only do an unusually large number of Wyomingites volunteer for military service, which is admirable, the state had nearly supported a military against the government attitude in recent years. Now, with it appearing that the US might send Wyoming's sons and daughters to die in Venezuelan jungles while doing something that will gut the state's oil industry, some may be having second thoughts. Hageman may be hedging her bets for her Senate run, or she may actually be among those who are horrified by the insane neo colonialism of the Trump interregnum.
January 6, 2026
Venezuela and Greenland.
There's a lot of weird war related news circulating today.
Trump claims that the government of Venezuela is going to, well, here:
Frankly, I don't believe that this will occur. Much of what Trump has been saying about Venezuela is a lie and I suspect this is too.
If it isn't a lie, Wyomingites are going to get another dope slap from the demented fool they voted for. It'll take the price of oil in the state for years. It's at $46.37, below profitability, right now.
Of course, the goal would be to depress the price of oil, which consumers in most locations want depressed, even though we ought to be weaning ourselves off of oil. But closer to home, this is another example of why Wyomingites are absolute idiots to vote for the GOP.
The Nobel Peace Prize winning Venezuelan woman who probably ought to be running the country is headed home. Hopefully she takes over the government, although there's every sign that the Venezuelan socialist party will continue to do so and not much will really change.
Trump, who is demented, is now threatening Greenland.
If we lived in a sane time they'd be taking him out of the Oval Office in a straight jacket, but the Republican Party is now largely bat shit crazy so there's a real chance we'll do this, even while, for the first time, some Republican leaders are dismissing it.
Trump needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment, and like yesterday.
January 8, 2026
United States v. Venezuela
It looks like Il Duce Don's intervention in Venezuela is receiving the same treatment the outbreak of the Second World War did in Nazi Germany
Does The US Public Have A Different Idea Of What Makes America "Great"?
Public Reaction to the Venezuela intervention Is Surprising
Readers of the epic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich will recall that while many Germans were enthusiastic about Hitler coming to power, the public was not thrilled at all with the outbreak of World War Two. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The difference, maybe, is that democracy had already fled in Germany by 1939, whereas its trying to hold on in the United States.
cont:
Rubio Details Plan to Sell Venezuela’s Oil and Guide the Country’s Post-Maduro Future
This is being hailed in some quarters as a rational plan, fitting into sort of a trend line to express relief when Marco Rubio says something as opposed to Donald Trump.
Well, at least it's a plan.
The problem with it is that it really requires Venezuela's cooperation and there's no reason to believe that will be forthcoming. In this sense, it's likely to be like the 1954 Geneva plan for Vietnam, which everyone agreed was a nifty plan, and never stood a chance.
The main goal of the Socialist in Venezuela right now is no doubt to stay in power, which the Trump administration seems content to let them do. That may be because Rubio knows that removing them would involve a large-scale war.
So, we're going to sell some oil. We'll probably invest in their petroleum infrastructure. The whole thing will depress the price of oil, to the detriment of US producers, and most of the people we were complaining about in Venezuela keep their jobs.
cont:
The Senate voted to have a vote on a War Powers Resolution that would prohibit further military action in Venezuela.
Contrary to some reporting, this does not have an immediate effect of prohibiting further action in Venezuela, but there may very well be the votes to do that, in which case there are definitely enough to prohibit actions against Denmark in an insane effort to seize Greenland.
Trump is, of course, upset. This may very well take the wheels off of the Venezuelan go cart.
Also, in related news, the administration is proposing a $1.5T budget, that's trillion, for defense next year, which is also insane. The country doesn't have that kind of money. Frankly a person has to wonder if that is just some sort of bribe to the military, which may not be all that happy about some current events.
Some in the traditional conservative camp, on the other hand, are very enthusiastic over Marco Rubio and Venezuela, although no element of realism seems to have sunk into the facts that in reality, the country is run by the same political groups that were running it last week and there's very little that can be done about that other than a war of economic attrition.
Footnotes:
1. A real irony is present here in that Maduro was not the legitimate head of state, at this point, of Venezuela, and Donald Trump is not the legitimate head of state of the United States.
Related threads:
What we actually did and are doing.
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