When Washington says it has captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, it does so with the confidence of a landlord repossessing a flat rather than a superpower violating sovereignty.
No UN vote, no international mandate and no awkward questions about legality – just raw force, cloaked in the usual comforting vocabulary of ‘security’.
Bombs first, explanations later
The song Who’s The Terrorist? – now doing the rounds with a scorched Statue of Liberty clutching a rifle – does not invent history. It simply recites it. Iraq heard it in 2003, Libya in 2011, Panama, Grenada, Guatemala, Chile, Iran, the Philippines and Hawaii much earlier. The words barely change. Only the geography does.
Warplanes over cities at night; infrastructure collapsing into darkness; hospitals shaking; and civilians running with nothing packed. Then comes the press conference explaining why all this was ‘necessary’.
Washington said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but none were found. The same voices now insist that Venezuela requires intervention. ‘Trust us’, they say again – just as they always do.
Kidnapping as foreign policy
US President Donald Trump has never been one for diplomatic subtleties. Why waste time with negotiations when you can send an aircraft? Why endure speeches when a show of force does it better?
The reported capture of a sitting president and his wife by Trump’s forces represents a new brazenness – regime change not by proxy or coup, but by outright abduction. International law is not ignored here; it is mocked, and sovereignty is not questioned; it is dismissed.
Security, but for whom?
‘They say it’s security.’
‘They say it’s necessary…’
Necessary for whom? Certainly not for the families pulling children from rubble. Not for hospitals losing power, and certainly not for civilians who become statistics before they become headlines.
Security, in this context, is not about safety. It is about access, oil fields, shipping lanes, currencies, and influence. When oil is sacred, lives become negotiable. The uniforms get washed, and the blood is explained away.
Silence never saved anyone
The most unsettling line in the song is not accusatory. It is instructional: Small countries – watch carefully. Silence did not protect Iraq, nor Libya, nor Chile, nor Panama. It merely delayed attention until the crosshairs shifted.
The international community’s habit of selective outrage – loud when rivals err, mute when allies bomb – has created a permission structure for this behaviour. You stayed silent when it was not you. Now the playbook has your name pencilled in.
A song as an indictment
Whoever wrote and rendered Who’s The Terrorist? understood timing. Protest music often arrives late, embalming yesterday’s injustice. This one arrives mid-sentence, interrupting the official narrative while it is still being spoken.
Set against a Liberty in tatters – torch intact, gun newly acquired – the lyrics ask a question Washington never answers: when bombs fall without mandate, when leaders are dragged out at gunpoint, when international law applies only to the weak, who exactly qualifies as the terrorist? It is not a rhetorical question. It is an accusation.
The old empire, the same excuse
‘They said the same thing in Iraq.
Bombs first. Explanations later…’
That line should be engraved on the Pentagon, not sung online. Because until it stops being true, until ‘security’ stops meaning domination, and ‘necessary’ stops meaning profitable, the world will keep hearing the same refrain – and watching the same cities burn. Small countries would do well not to hum along quietly.
