By Raffique Shah
January 10, 2026

Over the past few months, the world has edged closer to war than it ever did since Vietnam. As someone with a keen interest in history, I have watched this dance of death, staged by one man, the President of the United States of America, as he orchestrated the deadliest of games, seemingly without a care in the world. Human lives will be lost-of that we are certain.

Trump personally directed the capture of the elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro-as dramatic a scene as one would encounter. I try to imagine the soldiers involved in the kidnapping of the president of a sovereign state, which-however simple it was, given America’s enormous military capability-will have had hundreds, if not thousands, of personnel “on edge” as the operation unfolded.

The American soldiers and other personnel were risking their lives for salaries that are never worth it; think, too, of the millions of Latin Americans who were on edge expecting to face death every time they saw “unusual” activity around them. In this conflict, which is more or less one man’s flight of fancy, the death toll has not yet reached the 100-plus body bags per day that was normal in Vietnam.

Reporters who cover wars like this, in which the official death toll is still relatively low, never see the parents, families, friends and others close to the soldiers who expect their loved ones to die at any time. Hell, it is unsafe for reporters on the ground during conflicts, with the ongoing war in the Gaza taking roughly 270 journalists and media workers to date.

Nowadays, with high-speed communication, such people can likely get news faster than the battlefield commanders. Post-Vietnam, thousands of names were added to what I call the register of births and deaths by war. Almost every Trinidadian was touched by the Vietnam War, some having sons or nephews or friends who fought in the war-some dying, or suffering other serious injuries that changed their lives forever.

Ordinary human beings who were seeking better lives for themselves in America joined the military voluntarily with promise of citizenship. This could be replicated in many populous countries where it was normal to use immigrants in their militaries with the promise of a superior status.

Do you know how many T&T boys who chose this route ended up stark raving mad? Or how many more of them ended up on the streets as drug addicts? Because of my peculiar circumstances-I have been a soldier, fighter for human rights, trade unionist, and more-I have met more veterans than most people out there. I have heard the stories, and the graphic descriptions will make you cringe with horror.

I met men who were bright, but who were uncertified lunatics. Most wars damage the mental capacity of those directly involved. It makes no difference whether you are the one bombing or the one being bombed. The carnage of war extends beyond the body bags. Some men’s minds are so muddled at the end that they are unable to function as ordinary human beings would. Hundreds of organisations emerged across the world, all of them seeking to help Vietnam War veterans in particular.

Now, I cannot claim to be any expert on warfare or on soldiers. But as a larger-than-life trained soldier, I was alarmed even by the haunted looks on the faces of these veterans. When you talked with them, that was where you saw a deep madness that looked homicidal. The family structures of these men collapsed. The husbands sent to war by these wives never returned-not in the way you’re thinking. They were just different men, mentally dismantled on their return. War does that to people.

It disturbs me that the president of the most powerful nation on Earth could sit in his retreat at Mar-a-Lago, watching remotely what was taking place in Caracas, and comparing it with watching a movie. His men invaded at his behest, and were killing for their country other men who were defending their country against a modern-day imperialist and usurper.

It bothers me more that Trump could deal death to poor people as if he were at an arcade on one of those machines, playing a game for tokens. These are real people with real lives. Families, children, elderly people, with real emotions and feelings. And, when he finally made clear his true intentions, what amounted to stealing a nation’s sovereign wealth, he did a little jig on live television, so overjoyed was he that finally he would get his grubby, grimy little hands on the world’s largest oil reserves.

Pity the poor bastards on those little pirogues who were roasted alive by bombs guided by expert military hands under the guise of narcotic trafficking. The dogs of war are barking.