Once upon a time……..when was the “once upon a time” time? Maybe last September. That’s about as far back as I can remember. And what do I remember? I remember that we were knocking small boats out of the water in the south Caribbean in order to stop Venezuela from sending drugs to the United States.

Of course, a lot of comments can be made about that escapade, but this morning, I am going to stick to only one. Venezuela was not sending drugs to the United States. Period. No argument here from anyone.

To the extent that Venezuela was moving drugs through the Caribbean, they were apparently headed to close-by locations where they would be processed and packed and, for the most part, then sent to Europe. They were going to Suriname, or to Trinidad. They were never headed to the United States. Clearly, his often repeated commeny that each boat sunk meant 25,000 American lives saved could only have been directed to the deplorables (oops, I mean the gullible)

But that made no difference. We were still sinking boats (and killing over 100 defenseless people) that left Venezuelan ports because they were sending drugs to the United States. Reality, as to the reason, was irrelevant.

The real, then not said, reason, we now know, was that Donald Trump wanted to steal Venezuela’s oil, and he needed a better excuse than “I want to steal Venezuela’s oil”.

Well, Donald Trump is Donald Trump and, like a leopard, he does not change his spots.

Let’s move to Greenland. For months now, we have been hearing that the United States needs to take Greenland away from its own people and from Denmark (forget the morality of this, for a second) because it is needed for American security. He says this by simply saying that, if America does not capture Greenland, Russia will. Or maybe China.

Well, that sure sounds serious. Until you think about it and realize that (a) neither Russia nor China has given any indication that they are going to try to capture Greenland, (b) that the United States not only has military bases and defense facilities on Greenland but is party to an agreement that says we can expand and increase those facilities to the extent that we want, and (c) Denmark, and therefore Greenland, is a member of NATO and, through Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the United States is already bound to defend Greenland from attack. There is absolutely no need for America to take over Greenland, either to defend it from enemies, or to use it as an outpost for our security forces.

Then, why is Trump so anxious to take over Greenland? To answer this question, remember what I said before: “Donald Trump is Donald Trump, and like a leopard, he does not change his spots”.

I quote Google’s AI: “Greenland holds significant potential for various minerals, most notably rare earth elements (REEs) vital for modern technology, alongside substantial deposits of zinc, copper, gold, iron ore, graphite, nickel, tungsten, and even oil, though much remains unexplored beneath its vast ice sheet.”

Donald Trump simply wants to steal Greenland’s mineral wealth. Nothing more complicated than that. America’s security interest is, like America’s need to stop Venezuelan drugs, is irrelevant.

Now, why does Trump want to do this? Does he want to do this in order to make his rich friends richer, or because, if he can make his rich friends richer, he is certain that they will all make him richer? Or does he want to do this because, he knows that control of the Venezuelan oil and Greenland’s minerals will make America itself richer and less dependent on foreign governments in the future for items that he believes (perhaps correctly) that this country will need or need to control?

I don’t know the answer to this, or whether it’s a combination of both. But I do think that what Trump is doing is rational.

It is also outrageous, and goes against everything that we have ever been taught about America, America’s difference, and American ethics. If we are simply to become a rich, powerful gangster state, we will wind up a rich, powerful gangster state. But we won’t be America.