Matt: They named it Operation Total Extermination. That's no joke. You know, it's not critics, it's the Pentagon under oath before the House Armed Services Committee describing joint U.S. Ecuadorian military strikes along the Columbia border. Operation Total Extermination. And while every camera in the country is pointed at Iran, and it should be, it's disaster, something big is taking shape across the Western hemisphere and... Very few people are covering it. So let me just give you a list of what's happening right now as of today. So we've got the U.S. bombing Iran. We are funding and providing cover for Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon. And I actually think that we're sending ⁓ armed servicemen and women to the Gulf right now, something like 8,000 new personnel. my contention is that They'll be used not in Karg Island, but to help support Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon. We'll see. That's going on. Plus, a couple of months ago, January, we captured the president of Venezuela and installed a puppet government. And we're also reportedly holding criminal charges over the puppet's head to keep her in line. We have imposed an oil blockade on Cuba that has collapsed their electrical grid three times this month. Got 10 million people without power. sometimes only power for a few hours during the day. Meanwhile, Trump is talking about taking that island and we're conducting joint land strikes with Ecuador along the Colombian border under this operation total extermination. We are running boat strikes across the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific that have killed at least something like 160 people since September with No evidence provided, no names released, no trials. The UN says that they are extrajudicial killings. ⁓ A former ICC chief prosecutor called them crimes against humanity and a Pentagon official told Congress last week that all of this is quote, the beginning. So that's happening. ⁓ The man who won two elections in large part by promising no new wars is running simultaneous military operations across three continents now. And the Pentagon just told Congress that they're planning to expand it. So in this episode today, I mean, we've been really focused on Iran, rightfully so, as I mentioned before, but today I wanna walk through what's actually happening in the Western hemisphere, in our home territory. The boat strikes, the land strikes, Cuba, Venezuela, the 18 nation coalition nobody voted for. And this thing they're calling the Don Roe Doctrine, which takes a 200 year old policy design to keep foreign empires out of our hemisphere and flips it into a license for us to become one. member of the House Armed Services Committee asked last week when all of this ends, level achievement would be necessary to stop? Seems like valid question. The Pentagon official responded with a wall of words about border security and cartels and terrorism. The congressman interrupted and asked again, and the answer did not get any clearer at all. They don't have an answer. Sound familiar? Same thing with Iran. What are we doing there? What's the purpose? What's the end game? What are our objectives? They don't have answers because, well, in the case of the Western hemisphere, it doesn't seem like they intend for it to end. And who knows about Iran? So what's happening in the Western hemisphere, in our home hemisphere? Well, let's start with the boats because this has been going on since September and it still does not get the coverage it deserves. It's Operation Southern Spear. Since September 2025, the US military has been bombing small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Now I heard about this at the time, it insane. But I honestly, I kind of forgot that it was happening with all the stuff that's going on in the Middle East. but something like 46 strikes, there's been 48 vessels destroyed and at least 159 people killed. Like, we're assassinating people. because the Pentagon is calling them narco-terrorists and they're releasing videos of the strikes, but they're not releasing the names of the dead. They're not releasing evidence of what was on the boats. They're not notifying families. They've never identified which specific cartels they claim to be targeting, just quote, designated terrorist organizations. There's no trials, no due process, just missiles from the sky into small boats and open water, even double taps sometimes. And here's the legal reality that is horrific. Like even if every single person on those boats was a drug trafficker, which the Pentagon has never proven, drug trafficking itself is not a capital offense in the United States. We don't execute people for moving drugs. Not after a trial, not after a conviction, not ever. What we're doing in the Caribbean and the Pacific is executing people at sea without trial for a crime that doesn't carry the death penalty. That's not a war on drugs. That's extra judicial killing. ⁓ That's not just me saying it and even if it were it would still be true You have the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said this There's a direct quote None of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force Human Rights Watch classified the strikes as extrajudicial killings a former chief prosecutor of the International Crime Court the ICC called these crimes against humanity and The original Southcom commander, is ⁓ Admiral Holsey, the person overseeing these operations reportedly stepped down after voicing concerns about these campaigns. Does that sound familiar? I mean, this is a pattern that keeps repeating. The people closest to these operations raise objections and resign and then they get replaced. But Kent, Joe Kent last week, right? Holsey, the intelligence gets ignored, the operations continue. Southcom's new commander, General Donovan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee something interesting. said, boat strikes are not the answer. Then in the same hearing, he teased a larger campaign. said, quote, a counter cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network. When the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, asked directly if the Pentagon would be moving to a lot more terrestrial strikes, the acting assistant secretary replied, yes. So the boat strikes, horrific to think about as they are. just, we're just like assassinating people. Those are just the beginning. Now we're moving to land. On March 3rd, and this large, like this escaped my attention. I think this largely escaped most people's attention, except for maybe Anywar.com or like Scott Horton or something. Dave DeCamp maybe. They probably saw this stuff, but under the radar. But on March 3rd, the US and Ecuador conducted joint strikes along the Columbia-Ecuador border under Operation Toll Extermination, the one I mentioned to start this episode. A 500-pound bomb, likely a US-manufactured Mark 82, landed in Colombian territory. It landed there. Didn't explode. It's just sitting there on a farm in Colombia's border region. Colombia's President Petro filed a formal diplomatic protest. I guess... That's one way to deal with it The Pentagon told Congress that this is a set this is setting the pace for regional deterrence focused operations against cartel infrastructure throughout Latin America in the Caribbean Just Pentagon speak for this is the template and we're gonna use it everywhere how many countries One would ask they couldn't say The acting assistant secretary was asked how many land strikes were being conducted across the hemisphere his answer quote. I don't have an exact number How do you not know? how many countries land strikes are being ⁓ conducted across in our own hemisphere. That's insane. Of course he knows the number. ⁓ So he won't tell us, but what we do know is the infrastructure. We've got MQ-9 Reaper drones are operational over Ecuador. The FBI opened its first permanent office in Quito. I think that's how you pronounce it, Q-U-I-T-O, Quito on March 11th in Ecuador. US Special Forces are operating alongside Ecuadorian commandos. This is the first acknowledged US ground combat operation on South American soil since Panama in 1989. And like no one's talking about it. And then of course there's Venezuela. You all probably know this very well, but in January, the US captured President Nicolas Maduro in a pre-dawn Delta Force raid, Operation Absolute Resolve. ⁓ Grabbed him, flew him into the USS Iwo Jima, then brought him to New York. He's on trial or he's been indicted. He pled not guilty. The US now effectively runs Venezuela through his successor, Delci Rodriguez. Federal prosecutors have reportedly drafted criminal charges against her, not to prosecute her, but to hold over her head. Now, do what we say or we'll indict you too, Ms. Rodriguez. ⁓ Trump has floated making Venezuela the 51st state. And ⁓ so it's not just Venezuela under US control. Trump recently said, and this is verbatim, we're going to do Iran before Cuba. So he's queuing up regime changes like there's some sort of agenda items. He's got Iran first, then Cuba next. And all of this falls under what Trump announced earlier this month as the shield of the America's summit, an 18 nation, America's counter cartel coalition. The ⁓ nations signed a joint security declaration. The intercept reviewed it and called it, quote, astonishingly vague. It offers almost nothing of substance on what these countries actually agreed to, but the Pentagon is treating it as a blank check. Sounds more like laundering to enrich the military industrial complex and the elite and the connected to me. At the summit, Trump told the room that the US will soon be coming to Cuba and that its government is very much at the end of the line. And Cuba is a story about what the United States looks like when it decides to break a country slowly instead of bombing it quickly. We as Americans who've lived through the global war on terror focus a lot of our ire towards our government's actions in the Middle East. Killing over million people will do that. But Cuba is an impoverished, failing state due to US embargoes, assassination attempts, regime change attempts, and political pressure for something like 70 years. And recently, no oil has been delivered to Cuba for three months. The island produces about 40 % of its own fuel, but that's not enough to run a country of 10 million people. since Trump imposed the oil blockade in January, threatening tariffs on any country that sells or provides fuel to Cuba, The country has been slowly suffocating. The electrical grid has completely collapsed three times in March alone. There have been three, you know, those have caused three nationwide blackouts. You got 10 million people in the dark. You hospitals canceling tens of thousands of surgeries, fuel rationed so severely that gas costs $9 a liter on the unofficial market. I'm sure that's going up. To fill a car costs more than $300, which is more than most Cubans earn in a year. People are cooking on wood burning stoves. Daily power lasts two to five hours in most areas. Cuba's vice minister of energy confirmed this week that the country has received zero diesel, zero fuel oil, zero gasoline, zero aviation fuel and zero liquefied petroleum gas for three months. Cuba's president Diaz-Canel said that the island is operating on solar powered natural gas and aging thermoelectric plants. The technicians keeping those plants running have been described by experts as magicians giving the state of the infrastructure. It's fallen apart. One professor who tracks Cuba said, if this continues, the economy could collapse completely and then you would have social chaos and probably mass migration. I if they can get off the island. None of this is an accident. This is a plan. Trump said, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. They're a very weakened nation right now, because we made them weak. He told reporters he believes that he'll have the honor of taking Cuba. When asked whether a US military operation there would look like Venezuela or Iran, he said, I can't tell you that. He's got no plan. And while the blockade squeezes the island, the administration is running a regime change operation behind the scenes and the target is to replace their current president with someone more cooperative. And their reported pick is Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of Raul Castro. I wish I were making that up. So you got, know, I don't think we talk about Cuba a lot at all, but like Raul Castro, brother to Fidel, ⁓ is, was a dictator. And so his grandson, not a reformer, not a dissident, not someone chosen by the Cuban people, is a grandson of an old dictator selected by Washington because he's someone they think they can work with. Dropsite News reported that despite Trump claiming the US was negotiating with, quote, the highest people in Cuba, no high level negotiations were actually occurring, which is exactly what's happening in Iran right now. Trump keeps saying we're negotiating. They want to make a deal. We're not letting them quite yet, but they want to make a deal. Oh, they're so, they so need a deal. They're begging us for a deal. Of course, Iran keeps saying, no, there's no, we're not, we're not even talking. They're basically saying, fuck off. We're in it to win it, buddy. We're not talking to you. Last time we talked to you and the time before you bombed us. Well, it sounds like the same thing is happening in Cuba where like Trump's like, oh yeah, we're talking to some high level people, but the regime's like, no, no, we're not. They even bargored us. The only contact was with Castro's grandson. So the regime change operation isn't about democracy in case the Trump administration really starts to lean into that false narrative. And they will, because there's no threat. Cuba's no threat to the United States. So what are they going to say? Oh, humanitarian. Oh, they're killing protesters. It's going to be that same playbook again. But it's not about democracy. It's about control. Swap one strongman for another as long as the new one takes direction from Washington. We all know Rubio's got a, like he's got a fetish with Cuba. He wants to take it too. UN human rights experts condemn the blockade as a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order. I mean, no kidding. And who does this hurt? This doesn't hurt the regime. This just hurts the people, 10 million people. The UN secretary general said he was extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation and warned it would worsen or even collapse if Cuba's oil needs aren't met. Residents in the central city of Moron took to the streets to protest. Again, sound familiar? Which is a rarity in a country where unauthorized demonstrations are illegal and punishable with jail time. People are banging pots and pans in Havana. The country's breaking. And this is where... History matters, comes into play because the United States has tried to break Cuba before many times, like been in a constant state of the United States trying to break small island nation of Cuba. 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was a CIA backed operation to overthrow Castro, failed spectacularly. That's the one which pissed off Kennedy so much. He's like, I'm gonna break the CIA into little tiny little pieces, sprang to the wind. Can't remember his exact quote, but he was so angry because the CIA misled him. Oh yeah. All the people in Cuba, they'll rise up. They'll be on our side. If we just go in there, failed spectacularly. It was so pissed. The CIA tried to assassinate Fidel Castro at least eight times with poisoned cigars, exploding seashells. It sounds made up, but it's not. It reads like a bad fiction, but it's a declassified fact. And then there's the one that should... Make your skin crawl, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a top secret memo titled justification for US military intervention in Cuba. It proposed false flag operations to justify an invasion. And among the plans, sink a boatload of Cuban refugees, real or simulated, blow up a US ship in Cuban waters and blame Cuba. Stage a remember the main incident. And then this is the one, attack Cuba's electrical grid. That memo is declassified. can read it yourself. It's called Operation Northwoods. In 1962, the Pentagon proposed attacking Cuba's electrical grid as a pretext for invasion. And in 2026, United States is attacking Cuba's electrical grid through a blockade. Slightly different method, but the same playbook. Trump said, I'm holding Cuba. We're to do Iran before Cuba. He's got it on a schedule. It's going to happen. I mean, things are heating up in the Western Hemisphere and it's largely not covered because of all the stuff going on in Iran, but we got to watch out. So we've got in the Western Hemisphere, boat strikes across two oceans, land strikes in Ecuador spilling into Colombia, puppet state in Venezuela, Cuba being strangled into submission, and now an 18-nation military coalition that nobody voted for and nobody can clearly define. What connects all of it? Well, in 1823, President James Monroe established what became the Monroe Doctrine. The idea was simple, European empires stay out of the Western hemisphere. It was defensive. Don't colonize here. This is our neighborhood. Don't meddle here. We've got this. Makes sense. Trump has taken that doctrine, flipped it and turned it into something Monroe wouldn't even recognize. His administration, of course, calls it the Donrow Doctrine because he's the Don, of course, that's what they call it. ⁓ The National Security Strategy, which was released late last year, described it as a potent restoration of American power and priorities. It defines American immediate security perimeter as America's, sorry, America's immediate security perimeter as Alaska. to Greenland, into the Arctic, to the Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico, formerly, the Panama Canal and surrounding countries. You know, read that geography, you've got Alaska, Greenland, which Trump has threatened to annex, of course, the Gulf of America, which is Gulf of Mexico. So you got the Panama Canal, which Trump has pressured Panama to hand over, calling it a U.S. national asset, despite the fact that Panama owns it, and surrounding countries, which is pretty vague. I mean, it could be... every country in Central and South America. The Monroe Doctrine said, no foreign empires in our hemisphere. The Donro Doctrine says the hemisphere is our empire. So about that 18 nation coalition, again, what matters is how they're using it. Joseph Humeier, the acting assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and America's security affairs, the Pentagon official who testified before Congress last week, is treating that coalition like a permission slip for military operations across the region. He was asked directly, if any of the 18 nations raised sovereignty concerns about the US potentially conducting strikes in their countries. He said they all want this support, but the document they signed doesn't say that, it barely says anything. And here's where the leverage becomes visible. Humair told Congress that the US used gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela to strong arm Cuba and gain compliance from Nicaragua and to shift the Caribbean in a favorable direction towards US interests. Gunboat diplomacy and strong arm, they want compliance. These are his words for what the United States is doing to sovereign nations in 2026. And then there's Columbia. Recent leaks suggest federal prosecutors may be drafting an indictment against Colombia's president, Petro, on drug charges. The same playbook as Maduro. Indict a sitting head of state, use it as leverage or a pretext for action to gain control. A former defense official told The Intercept that the leaks, combined with the U.S. Ecuador strikes along Colombia's border and the unexploded bomb on Colombian soil, 500 pounds, big, increasingly look like a coordinated campaign to forment discord. if not conflict. When Trump was asked in January about attacking Colombia, he said, it sounds good to me. So Venezuela captured, puppet government installed Cuba, oil blockade, regime change operation underway, Ecuador, joint military strikes, US special forces on the ground, Colombia, potential indictment of the president, strikes on their border, Nicaragua compliance gained, the Caribbean shifted in a favorable direction. And beyond the hemisphere, threats to NX Greenland, threats to make Canada a state, threats to conduct military strikes in Mexico, all in the same year, from the same administration who has completely mishandled the Middle East. And not just in Iran, we're also conducting military operations in Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen. This is not foreign policy. This is an empire's desperate attempt to reclaim the power and stature it once had. And the man running it promised you the opposite, said he wouldn't do it. So let me just put some numbers here because when you scatter everything across the different stories and hemispheres and countries, there's a lot to handle. You lose the scope. And the scope is kind of the point. Iran, over, as of today, think over 1,400 dead. I think 500 women and children. Crazy. More than 18,000 injured. The US is spending roughly 900 million to a billion dollars a day to fund that thing. They're asking for $200 billion more. The Center for American Progress estimated $5 billion in the first four days alone. Oil went from $65 to over $100 a barrel. I think it was trading at 95 today. Gas is up 30, 40 % depending on where you live. California, a lot more, I think. I saw diesel at like eight bucks. 13 American service members dead that we know of, but honestly, I suspect more than they're not telling us. The war is in its fourth week and there is no defined endpoint. We know there's more military buildup if the two aircraft carriers weren't enough. Now we've got 8,000 more Marines, I think, going there. If not, are already there. I know some from Asia, some from San Diego, and I think 2,500 more today being sent there. Lebanon There's over a thousand dead eight hundred thousand people are displaced Israel launched a full ground invasion with explicit US backing They destroyed the main bridge connecting the south to Beirut They could talked about this a bit on the last episode or I did a ten minute eight minute ten minute short episode You could see on Twitter follow me at Matthew Carano. They're just my full name and I talk about this that I think that that's the That'll be the trade for Israel allowing Trump to back out of Iran and regime change is Trump agrees to support Israel's takeover of southern Lebanon. Well, I mean, they're doing it. They just bifurcated bifurcated the country knocked out the bridge that connects the south portion to Beirut in the north and have invaded. Their defense minister said displaced civilians will not return. That means this is our territory now. He also said that this will outlast the Iran war. So US is clearly supporting Israel's annexation of southern Lebanon. Israel gives up regime change in Iran, which I think is what's going to happen. And then you've got the boat strikes. You've got 159 dead across 46 strikes since September. No names, no evidence, no trials. We don't know what they did. We don't know if they're, we don't know. They could be fishermen. We have no idea. We just know that the Trump administration has killed them. You got Cuba, three nationwide blackouts in March, 10 million people affected, zero oil shipments in three months, tens of thousands of surgeries postponed, gas at $9 a liter. And Venezuela. At least 83 people killed during the capture of Maduro, maybe more. A puppet government installed. Federal prosecutors holding charges over the puppets. Head as leverage. got Ecuador and Colombia, joint land strikes and unexploded 500 pound bomb sitting on a Colombian farm. And on top of that, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, operations continuing from the last 20 years of the war on terror that never actually ended. Besides the bloodshed and dollar spent, what ties it together is again, none of this was authorized by Congress, not the Iran war, not the boat strikes, not the Cuba blockade, not the Ecuador operations. The Constitution says Congress declares war. The War Powers Resolution says the president... has to notify Congress and get approval within 60 days. This administration has treated both as suggestions, but to be fair, so have all administrations for half century and Congress refuses to do anything about it. And we're just not even talking about what's going on in the Western hemisphere, but in some ways it's scarier than what's going on in the Middle East. A former State Department lawyer, Rebecca Ingber said it plainly, quote, rushing to war on one man's whims is the exact opposite of what the Constitution demands. Of course it is. Constitution. is not to give rights to the people. The people have rights, inherently. The Constitution is there to constrain the government, not doing a very good job of it because the people who have sworn an oath to protect it have failed to do so. Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Pentagon directly that these operations in Latin America appear to be morphing into a new forever conflict with no clear goal, no stated endpoint. He asked what level of achievement would be necessary to stop and he didn't get an answer. Sounds like Iran. He asked if the boat strikes would continue indefinitely. The response was confused and contradictory. It's the war on terror model. Again, no defined enemy, just quote, designated terrorist organizations that they won't name, no exit criteria, no congressional oversight, no public debate. Started with boats, now it's land strikes next to its regime changes. And the only answer to when does this end is it doesn't. This is Afghanistan for 20 years, Iraq, still kind of ongoing. The drone program expanded under every president from Bush to Biden each time the authorization got vaguer, the oversight got thinner and the operations got bigger. And now we're doing it again across an entire hemisphere while simultaneously fighting the largest war in the Middle East in a generation. So that's stepping back and looking at all of it at once. What's the thread? Why? Trump claims it's about cartels and drug trafficking in our hemisphere. It's not drugs. The fentanyl that's actually kill... We went all through this in Venezuela when we tried to use that as the ⁓ reason. But the fentanyl that's actually killing Americans comes across the Mexican border, manufactured with Chinese precursors smuggled mostly by US citizens at legal ports of entry. The DEA's own data, the government says this. itself. The boat strikes in the Caribbean aren't intercepting fentanyl. Cuba isn't flooding the US with narcotics. Venezuela's crime problem is real, but it wasn't an imminent threat to the homeland. The narco terrorist label is doing the same work that weapons of mass destruction did in 2003. It's a magic phrase that unlocks military authority without requiring any proof. It's not spreading to democracy. That's not what we're doing. That line was played out in the 70s. Obviously the actions of all administrations during the terror wars have shown us that they do not care about the people in these countries. I you look at Iran. When they started with that this is a humanitarian, that we're gonna attack Iran because of humanitarian reasons. When they say that, it's like so transparent. You're gonna help the local population by dropping bombs on the local population and killing a bunch of non-enemy combatants. What bizarre a world do you live in? No one believes you. And now we're replacing Cuba's leader with a dictator's grandson. We captured Venezuela's president and stalled his deputy and we're threatening to indict her. If she doesn't do what we say, you know, we're backing Israel's annexation of Southern Lebanon. We conducted joint strikes with Ecuador's government, which declared a nationwide curfew across four provinces. None of this has anything to do with spreading freedom. We're going to bomb you into freedom. It's not defense. Kent, Joe Kent, you know, he's been making the rounds. Good for him, stood up, but I listened to him on Tucker. I think it was the night after he resigned. And he confirmed there was no imminent threat from Iran. So did Rubio de facto by admitting we struck because Israel was going to. The Pentagon's own briefers told Congress that Iran wasn't planning to attack us. Cuba poses no military threat to the United States. The people on those boats posed zero military threat to the United States. Venezuela posed no military threat to the United States. So what is it? Well, Venezuela has one of the, maybe the world's largest proven oil reserves, possibly. Trump told us months ago, quote, it's going to make us a lot of money. Iran has massive oil and gas reserves and sits at the nexus of global energy trade. Cuba sits 90 miles off the Florida coast and has been a target for American control since before most of us were alive. The Panama Canal. is a global trade choke point. Ecuador gives the US a foothold for military operations across South America's Pacific coast. Every single one of these operations secures resources, which probably maybe securing resources from Venezuela was a necessity to go to war with Iran. But every single one of these operations secures resources, territory or strategic positioning. Every one of them enriches defense contractors who build the bombs, the drones, the ships, the autonomous systems. Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, their stock prices tell you who benefits. Every one of these operations expand the military industrial complex into new theaters with new budgets and new justifications for existence. Defense departments, $1 trillion now? That's its budget. And Trump's asking for another 200 billion, $1.2 trillion. The defense contractors are excited. They just need to help provide the wars so they can keep enriching themselves. So the pattern's not new, but this time it has a couple threads. In Latin America, this is the playbook the US has followed for over a century. In 1954, the CIA overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president because he threatened the profits of the United Fruit Company, which was an American corporation that essentially owned the country's agriculture. Noriega in Panama in 1989, a former CIA asset who became inconvenient, so we invaded and replaced him. And now Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador. Find a resource or a strategic interest and go in. Manufacture justification, communism, terrorism, narco-terrorism, remove the government, install something friendlier, secure the asset, move on to the next one. Venezuela's oil, Cuba's proximity, Ecuador's Pacific coast, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean as an American lake. This is empire. It's what the US has always done in this hemisphere when it feels its grip is loosening. That's one threat, but the Middle East is a different threat, of course. This is Iran and Lebanon. Not about American strategic interests. There's no American upside to the Iran war. Kent said it, Rubio accidentally confirmed it. Trump admitted it on Air Force One. Maybe we shouldn't be there. No shit, Trump. The Middle East operations exist because the United States government, and specifically the president, has been captured by a foreign power's interests. Israel wanted Iran degraded. Israel wanted Hezbollah destroyed. Israel wanted more territory, southern Lebanon, and the United States delivered all of it The Latin American thread is about American empire. The Middle East thread is about someone else's empire being built with American blood and treasure. We are literally building someone else's empire. Both are wrong. They're wrong in different ways and understanding the difference matters because the solutions are different too. The only thing that the two threads share is this. In both cases, the people who benefit are not the American public. And in both cases, nobody asked us about it. Operation Total Extermination, Operation Southern Spear, Operation Epic Fury, Operation Absolute Resolve, Shield of the Americas, the Donro Doctrine. These are not defensive operations. Defensive force is moral. Aggressive force is immoral. That's the difference. None of these are defensive operations, not a single one. Venezuela didn't attack us, Cuba didn't attack us. ⁓ Ecuador didn't attack us, Iran didn't attack us. Not a threat. Tulsi even confirmed it. The Pentagon's own briefers confirmed it. The boats in the Caribbean, they weren't attacking anyone, they were floating. It's what empire looks like. You name an operation total extermination and dare anyone to object. You sink boats and call the dead narco terrorists without evidence. You blockade an island of 10 million people until their hospitals go dark. You capture a head of state and install a puppet. You threaten to annex countries like you're collecting properties in a board game. And you do it all without cong... congressional approval without a declaration of war, without a single defined objective that anyone can point to and say, that's done, we can stop now. The people who actually run these operations keep telling us the truth over and over. When Kent resigned, he confirmed there was no threat. He resigned out of protest. Holsey reportedly stepped down over the boat strikes. The Southcom commander said, boat strikes aren't the answer. We're gonna have to expand into strikes on land. And when you ask how it ends, you get silence. The people doing the work know that this is wrong. The people giving the orders don't care. So I started this episode with the name Operation Total Extermination. I want to end with what that name tells us about the people who chose it. Even if you believe there are times when a nation has to use military force, and I'd argue almost none of these qualify. not almost. None of these qualify. But there is a time and a place where a nation has to use military force, and that's defensive. Really, the whole point of the nation state? you know, beyond protecting the rights of its citizens is to protect its borders. So if there's an invasion of the United States, we absolutely require the US military to meet that force and repel it. And you'd have an American citizens too. I know for a fact you'd have American citizens too, standing shoulder to shoulder, repelling that attack. That's what we would do. We protect our homes, protect our families, we protect our neighborhoods. protect our country, we would do that. None of these wars warrant force because none of the countries posed any threat to us. But even if you believe that there are times when a nation has to use military force, there should be a weight to it. Taking a human life, even an enemy's life, is the most serious thing a government can do. It should be reluctant. It should be sober. It should come with the full gravity of what you're doing, ending someone's existence, ending a father, a son, a brother, someone who will never come home. You don't name that total extermination. You don't brand killing like it's a product launch. You don't send your Pentagon official to Congress to say it's just the beginning with a straight face. The name tells you everything. These people are not reluctant. They're not burdened by the weight of what they're ordering. They're not losing sleep over the 160 people killed on boats with no evidence and no names. They're proud of it. They named it like a call of duty mission. And then they told Congress that more is coming. That's not strength. That is the absence of basic human recognition that killing people is serious. And when that recognition disappears from the people with the power to order it, That's when you get empires that collapse under the weight of their own cruelty. That is the language and behavior of an empire in decline, lashing out at the world because it can feel itself losing grip. And it's being done in your name, with your money, without your permission. We are watching the United States conduct military operations in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador. and across the Caribbean and Pacific simultaneously in a single year without authorization, without debate.