The US goes to War

[rareboy]

Everywhere on TV and in print now, we are seeing the GQP fall in line and repeat the mantra that the US must own Greenland.

This is the way it always happens.

There is a groundswell of reporting with talking heads explaining to US Americans the inevitability for stealing territory and resources.

The owners of the white house and congress impress upon their trained monkeys the necessity to inculcate the message into the US media mainstream.

And the Dems remain silent.

 

[KaraBulut]

^ The US won't be welcoming supporters of the Castro regime and they will be the ones looking to get out if the US parks another right wing apparatchik puppet regime in Cuba.

In fact, I would expect a reverse effect...that those whose families were brought down by CastroCo. will be looking to get back into Cuba to unlock some of the property and wealth they lost...they may be able to do much better than if they simply only sit in Miami.

I can only tell you about my experience.

Back during the Obama Administration, travel to/from Cuba was relaxed. Almost immediately, Southwest started flights to Havana. The flights out of Ft Lauderdale were very popular.

For years, ex-pats have visited Cuba and they usually brought an extra suitcase full of childrens clothes and other basic articles that we take for granted. During the Obama travel relaxation period, a new item became popular in Florida->Cuba travel: cell phones. At first, they would bring a lot of cell phones. Since then, the Cuban government has cracked down on the number of cell phones that a person can take to Cuba but I think it's still pretty generous- six phones per traveler was the last number that I heard.

The SWA flights from Ft Lauderdale to Havana ended in Jun 2024. I think they still have flights out of Tampa and maybe Orlando.

The proliferation of cell phones on the island has meant that Cuban young people are on the internet. It also means that it is easier for people on the island to keep in contact with their US-based relatives.

The average Cuban doesn't really think in terms of geopolitics. What they do think about is how long the power is on each day. Cuba was dependent upon Venezuela for oil to fuel power plants and for petrol to run their transportation. Electricity is also important for charging those cell phones. With the US cutting off their oil supply, it is going to make the average Cuban's life more miserable.

I did watch some videos of Cuban state news this week and they are running stories that focus upon the 32 Cuban soldiers that the US killed in Venezuela. They are calling Trump and the US military murderers.

 

[rareboy]

It is one of the reasons why I am sure that the US will now seize Cuba and then re-start the oil from Venezuala.

Cuba is going to be another Puerto Rico protectorate but without status. A non-state until the US manufactures elections that will re-establish it as a 'democracy' with a leader of US choosing.

 

[KaraBulut]

Past is prologue:

USS Maine (1890) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maine was sent to Havana Harbor to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban War of Independence. She exploded and sank on the evening of 15 February 1898, killing 268 sailors, or three-quarters of her crew. In 1898, a U.S. Navy board of inquiry ruled that the ship had been sunk by an external explosion from a mine. However, some U.S. Navy officers disagreed with the board, suggesting that the ship's magazines had been ignited by a spontaneous fire in a coal bunker...

The New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, sensationalized the Maine incident with intense press coverage, employing tactics that would later be labeled "yellow journalism". Both newspapers exaggerated and distorted much of the information they obtained, sometimes even fabricating news to fit their agendas. For a week following the sinking, the Journal devoted a daily average of eight and a half pages of news, editorials and pictures to the event. Its editors sent a full team of reporters and artists to Havana, including Frederic Remington, and Hearst announced a reward of $50,000 ($1.89 million in 2024) "for the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths."

Spanish–American War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba. It represented U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and Philippine Revolution, with the latter later leading to the Philippine–American War. The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific; the United States meanwhile not only became a major world power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

Of course, back then Cuba was a major producer of sugar and there was an American financial interest in Cuba's sugar cane plantations with it's AfroCuban "laborers".

Sugar Intervention - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Sugar Intervention was a series of events in Cuba from August 25, 1917, to February 15, 1922, when the United States Marine Corps was stationed on the island in response to instability that threatened sugar production.

And then, 40 years later with Batista and Castro and Khrushchev and Oswald and Kennedy's assassination and...

Mango Mussolini is running around talking about the "Donroe Doctrine". He has no concept of how the rest of the 19th century played out.

 

[rareboy]

Totally... past is prologue...the US is back to the days of imperialist aggression under bully regimes.

This is what we are back to.

The warning? At some point, the US may have to come out of hiding and declare war....which we know...it has been too cowardly to do since WWII.

It is so much more fun to launch military action, coups and aggressive terrorism under the guise of 'freedom'.

 

[KaraBulut]

Something that I've been laughing at all week on this "We're going to Columbia!... no Cuba!... no Mexico!... no Greenland!" thing.

The US military does a lot of things very well.

Two things that it doesn't do well:

1. Fight wars on multiple fronts.
2. Manage the war plan beyond page 1. See Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...

 

[rareboy]

The problem is the millions of people who have their lives destroyed by US incompetence at managing after the first assaults.

The military lacks the direction and skill that resulted in the Marshall Plan to help rebuild nations shattered by the NAZIs. But they don't really understand or believe that. Rumsfeld's disastrous follow-through on Iraq was simply breathtaking in its levels of laziness, arrogance, ignorance and just plain stupidity. It lacked even the incredibly modest logistical framework that followed the Afghanistan invasion.

But it is where the US may be underestimating its NATO partners, China, rrrZZia, India and middle east potentates who will be looking to exploit the chaos unleashed by the US.

But this is where the US is going to leave the Asian Pacific countries to dfend for themselves against Chinese military power. And leave Eiurope to defend itself. And Africa to be occupied by China, rrXXia and the Arab states.

I think the TrumpCo. vision is to have the American continents ringed with US ships and install bases everywhere it conquers another territory to create the ultimate Fortress Amerika. But this didn't work over the long term for the Romans, or the Brits or Japan or Germany.

As you note the US (like the other dead empires) is not effective fighting wars on multiple fronts.

The problem is that all the trade deals and agreements to buy trillions in US treasuries that Trump thinks he has negotiated will fall apart the moment that the US isn't there to provide a bulwark against the predations of other powers. The kill switch could get flipped the moment that the US puts boots on the ground in Greenland or Canada for instance.

 

[rareboy]

What do you want to bet that TrumpCo. lets this sanctioned ship pass through to rrrZZZIa?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/07/oil-ship-seized-by-us-over-venezuela-ban-newly-listed-under-russian-flag.html?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=695e96e514291c0001163b91&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky

 

[rareboy]

 

[KaraBulut]

...The military lacks the direction and skill that resulted in the Marshall Plan to help rebuild nations shattered by the NAZIs. But they don't really understand or believe that. Rumsfeld's disastrous follow-through on Iraq was simply breathtaking in its levels of laziness, arrogance, ignorance and just plain stupidity. It lacked even the incredibly modest logistical framework that followed the Afghanistan invasion.

It is interesting that you mentioned the Marshall Plan.

What I learned in World History in high school talked about Truman and "the Marshall Plan" but it didn't really get into the details. The few things that we were told later proved to be inaccurate, I later learned in college-level history classes.

The Marshall Plan wasn't a military plan. It originated in the Department of State. It wasn't devised during the war. It only came about because, a couple of years after the war ended, western Europe had trouble restarting their economy.

The Marshall Plan focused on infrastructure- roads, equipment, things needed to get farms up and running again to eliminate food shortages.

It wasn't a long-term plan- just a few years. It wasn't until the Communists in Russia started advancing on the eastern edge of Europe that the US Congress stepped in with a long-term recovery plan that was actually an anti-Communist plan to ally Western Europe's economy with the US. What I learned in high school as the Marshall Plan wasn't actually a long term recovery plan. That came later.

The institutions that were built up my the post-WWII recovery efforts and those that were created in the early 60s under Kennedy and Johnson were weakened or destroyed by DOGE in early 2025. There is no USAID. The experts in the State Department were purged. The Institute of Peace was attacked. There has been a brain drain in government, instituted by Marco Rubio, Russ Vought and Donald Trump. The people who would help recover Venezuela and return it to a democracy are gone.

 

[smokeshadow]

at least one GOP Senator is fed up with Miller

'Sick of Stupid': GOP Senator Slams Top Trump Advisor

U.S. Senator Thom Tillis blasted the Trump administration over its continued, escalating push to acquire the autonomous territory of Greenland, denouncing the advice the President has received from a top advisor while emphasizing that the U.S. Senate is a co-equal branch of the U.S. government...

www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com

 

[rareboy]

Tillis has spoken out against several TrumpCo. moves.

But I can guarantee that he will vote lockstep with the GQP in favour of anything Trump directs.

His comment that Greenland is a distraction from 'the good work that he is doing' should be all the indication anyone needs to not put too much importance on Tillis's remarks, likely delivered to an empty chamber.

 

[Norri]

The problem is the millions of people who have their lives destroyed by US incompetence at managing after the first assaults.

The military lacks the direction and skill that resulted in the Marshall Plan to help rebuild nations shattered by the NAZIs. But they don't really understand or believe that. Rumsfeld's disastrous follow-through on Iraq was simply breathtaking in its levels of laziness, arrogance, ignorance and just plain stupidity. It lacked even the incredibly modest logistical framework that followed the Afghanistan invasion.

If the military enjoyed the complaint populations they had in 1946 they probably would do just as well now as they did then. With restive populations survival takes precedence over rebuilding.

 

[rareboy]

^ And we can be pretty certain that the Chinese will be funding unrest in the population.

 

[rareboy]

Maybe everyone should stop using mercator projection to overemphasize and glamourize TrumpCo's newest obsession.

US soldiers might not be so excited to have to serve there.

In reality, the US just wants total control over the northwest passage shipping lanes and all the minerals it can extract.

 

[Norri]

^ And we can be pretty certain that the Chinese will be funding unrest in the population.

I doubt they will need any encouragement from anybody.