Why would both Democrats and Republicans want “regime change” in Venezuela and why would anyone want to repeat the second Iraq war all over again? Maybe to deflect the Mueller investigation? One could claim that, but this is a bi-partisan multinational event. Everyone from much of the City of London liberal media, to 10 nations in the Latin America, at least initially, were behind this -so what ‘s really happening here?

The question could be reformulated as “Why did both Democrats and Republicans vote for the war in Iraq”? Why continuously involve the United States in the global business of war? That’s probably the more salient discussion, however let’s stick to the present.

I found it laughable that no less Liberal-Democrats than Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders have tweeted out, at the very least, in favor of changing the regime in Venezuela which is opposite her position viz-a-viz the vote for the Iraq war. The entire so-called liberal media, seems to be, also on board with regime change as can be seen in several recent articles by the New York Times not to mention the coverage on CNN which-in my mind-has never seen a war they didn’t like.

So what gives? We know why the Republicans are warmongers because it’s self-evident. They have been for 3 decades now. Donald Trump himself stated we should get “all that oil …in Venezuela”. However, I think that the issue is rather one of money in politics -in this instance.

Both Democrat and Republican politicians often get quite wealthy in office and it’s not by avoiding donors and patrons. I think that’s a worldwide phenomena so I won’t pick on the US politicians and as Marco Rubio once said “this stuff is expensive” –referring to the high cost of campaigning. We might take the US politician’s view, except that the political class here has an inordinate impact on world affairs and appears to be highly motivated to effect regime change-especially in oil rich countries.

Even if Venezuela didn’t have massive oil reserves, that the political donor class(the big corps) all want a piece of, and even if NSC Adviser John R. Bolton had not essentially confirmed this by stating to Fox Business that “It will make a big difference to the US economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in & produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”¹ As for his, “5000 troops to Columbia” scribble, it was obviously, a piece of disinformation meant for the gullible in the Maduro regime to miss deploy their military resources. Venezuela is huge, vulnerable and could be invaded from multiple points(that don’t have a John R. Bolton post-it note sticking to them).

One must keep in mind, that the political class also lives in the ecosystem of the “Iron Triangle” between the 2 Houses, the Defense Department contractors, their lobbyists and the hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money that flows between them.

Military pork barrel projects, necessary and unnecessary have been a feature of the political landscape in the United States for much of our history-so it’s not in the political interest of anyone to stop involvement in small wars-provided they don’t escalate.

This dynamic will, of course, continue until one of these wars for profit escalates-or the funding dries up.

1 Fox Business – Trish Regan Prime Time – 2019/1/24 (accessed 2019/3/5)