Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

 

Watching my daughter walk through security at the Toulouse airport last May, I had the fear I would never see her in person again. 

I wasn't worried that one of us would die. I was worried about what the U.S. government would do. 

She had just spent three weeks with me in Southern France. She had stayed in The Nest, the retirement studio I'd bought. When I married my husband, it was much too small so we live around the corner in a two bedroom.

For those three weeks she and I had morning coffee and lunches together, walks, chats and café sits and of course hugs. Afternoons she was working and I was writing. 

It was heaven. I like my adored kid.

As much as I love the Boston area where she lives, because of the current government, I'm not sure I'd be allowed into the U.S. We know people who have not or have been temporarily detained. These are ordinary people, who were there only to speak at a conference.

This is not the first time, I thought my birth country would be off limits. I had renounced so I could continue with a bank account. Thanks to FATCA, I felt I had no reasonable choice if I wanted to continue an ordinary financial life in Switzerland.

About the same time Chuck Schumer had started legislation that anyone who renounced their citizenship would be barred from the U.S. Fortunately, it went nowhere. 

It was a relief to know in an emergency I could still go to my beloved stepmom or my kid. Renunciation meant I could have a normal financial life in Switzerland and still go back to my birth country and where I'd lived for over forty years.

I don't claim to be prophetic, but like my grandfather I can see beyond the headlines and government propaganda. He said when the U.S. sold metal to Japan in the 1930s it would be returned as bullets. WWII proved him right.

Thus, whether it was DNA or in-depth reading, I knew Vietnam was wrong long before the demonstrations and John McNamara's book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. 

Without setting foot in Iraq I never believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And I didn't believe Venezuelan drugs were killing U.S. citizens, although the drugs were sent by other countries. 

I didn't believe that regime change wasn't part of the Trump government plan. 

Like a wise woman said, "Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do." 

And knowing the history of oil in Venezuela, I didn't and don't believe the country stole it from the U.S. Their nationalization was more a non-renewal of agreements, admittedly without compensation to the oil companies.

Trump has said he has his eyes on Cuba, Greenland and Columbia. Spoken or unspoken he wants to take over the hemisphere. His plans to make Canada the 51state have fizzled. He has added his name to the Monroe Doctrine.

One person wanting to take over another's country has been going on throughout history. Probably in pre-historic times one cave chief would have captured another for their mammoth meat.

Alexander the Great wanted the Achaemenid Empire and more.  Constant takeover attempts by one king or another throughout history left much of European land bloody.  Hitler wanted Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands plus.

Nothing is new. Putin wanted Ukraine so he went for it. 

Like most quotes such as that alleged prediction by Donald Rumsfeld that the war would be a "cakewalk" the predictions of easy victories have proven false over and over.

After WWII, organizations like NATO and the UN have tried to establish international laws to prevent wars. That has only partially worked, but partial was at least a start in stopping illegal attacks on one country by another. 

That the takeover of Venezuela was fast and the fallout  undetermined, it still puts the U.S. and the world in danger of another major war.

Trump and his cronies have to be stopped before it is too late, but how?