The Watergate hotel and office complex, home of the infamous “third-rate burglary” and namesake of the political crisis during the Nixon Administration. Image: Farragutful, Wiki Commons
The Watergate hotel and office complex, home of the infamous “third-rate burglary” and namesake of the political crisis during the Nixon Administration. Image: Farragutful, Wiki Commons
In his eagerness to protect his government contracts and ensure that he and his wife are invited to the opening of the White House ballroom, Bezos has transformed the Post into a cheering section for the autocracy of Donald Trump.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
Every time an American president wakes up in the morning and decides this would be a good day to dispatch the American military to a foreign land for reasons of alleged national security masking plunder, it is traditional for the media, not to mention the Congress, to have a say about the matter. Neither the Congress nor our print media has distinguished itself.
Both of our major newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, took positions in favor of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964 which justified and authorized U.S. military involvement in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. Both papers supported the disastrous Bush administration decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that was Congressionally approved by the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. The New York Times ended up being sufficiently embarrassed by its coverage of and support for the Iraq war that the paper issued what amounted to an editorial apology in May of 2004.
Yesterday’s New York Times editorial on Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and his wife in Venezuela can be summed up by its headline: “Trump’s Attack on Venezuela is Illegal and Unwise.” The editorial hits all the right notes. It points out the hypocrisy of kidnapping Maduro to charge him with drug trafficking soon after pardoning the former president of Honduras who was convicted in a U.S. court of the same offense, and looks askance, to put it mildly, at the prospect of the U.S. “running” Venezuela while we avail ourselves of the country’s oil resources.
You may be wondering what the Washington Post has to say about yet another foreign adventure this time around? The Post’s editorial headline says it all:
“Justice in Venezuela.”
You really have to read the whole thing to get the full flavor of the complete and utter capitulation by the Jeff Bezos editorial board to Donald Trump’s dreams of profitable hegemony in this hemisphere, but the first few paragraphs give you enough sense of the thing to leave a taste in your mouth that you will not quickly rid yourself of:
“Millions of people around the world, most of all in Venezuela, are celebrating the downfall of the dictator Nicolás Maduro. President Donald Trump’s decision to capture him on Saturday was one of the boldest moves a president has made in years, and the operation was an unquestionable tactical success. The next step is ensuring that this triumph sets Venezuela up for stability and prosperity rather than more of the same, or worse.”
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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