chat

Before the War on Terror and 9/11, there was a low-level but constant drumbeat about Saddam Hussein, the Kurds, and atrocity porn. Like the Balkans and Hollywood's fascination with former Soviet nuclear scientists, it was the background radiation of the 90s that was sprinkled liberally in the news media. This background radiation would later be deliberately metastasized into justifications for the second Iraq invasion. WMDs evidence and justifications were built, in part, on a decade of talks about Kurds getting gassed and rampant media speculation that filled in the blanks from official reporting. 9/11 bloodthirst made Americans particularly uncritical about reprisals, like Afghanistan, but even that reaction was waning by the time the Iraq invasion was kicking off, hence the need for the WMD justifications.

The slow trickle of anti-Venezuela propaganda in particular rhymes with the second invasion of Iraq in the buildup. But I do think there are some differences:

• There isn't a parallel to 9/11 that will dramatically lower the threshold Americans were at during Iraq II.
• Little anti-Venezuela atrocity porn that would make for lurid television.
• The fresh memory of Iraq II and Afghanistan already leaves a great many with a particular distaste for foreign intervention; Viet-Nam Syndrom II: Electric Boogaloo
  • The administration has to bend-over-backwards to say it's not another Iraq