The Cinematic Delusion of American Mercenaries
Listen, if you haven’t seen the absolute dumpster fire that was the 2020 attempt to ‘liberate’ Venezuela, you’re missing out on the greatest comedy of errors since the Bay of Pigs, except this time the actors were even less convincing and the script was written by people who clearly had too much time on their hands and not enough actual tactical training in their brains. Disaster. It is truly mind-blowing how a group of ex-Green Berets, guys who are supposed to be the elite of the elite, thought they could just roll up on a beach in a fishing boat and take over a country of nearly thirty million people while their leader was busy tweeting from a Florida condo. Pathetic. This new documentary ‘Men of War’ peels back the layers of Jordan Goudreau’s ego to reveal a man who was so desperate for relevance that he gambled with the lives of his friends and the sovereignty of a nation just to feel like he was back in the game. Imagine thinking you are the star of a high-stakes thriller when in reality you are just a pawn in a game played by people who would not even remember your name if you got caught or killed in the process. Hubris. The sheer audacity of these men to believe that the Venezuelan military would just lay down their arms because a few white guys showed up with some fancy gear and a lot of confidence is the kind of colonialist fantasy that belongs in a nineteenth-century novel, not in the modern geopolitical landscape where information travels faster than a bullet. Delusional.
Operation Gideon: The Bay of Piglets
The whole Operation Gideon thing was so poorly executed that it almost feels like a satire of American interventionism, with its leaky boats and its leaked contracts and its utter lack of local support that made the whole endeavor look like a fraternity prank gone horribly wrong. Hilarious. You have Jordan Goudreau, a man who looks like he was cast by a director who wanted a generic ‘tough guy’ but ended up with a caricature, standing there signing papers with Juan Guaidó’s representatives like they were brokering the deal of the century instead of planning a suicide mission. Garbage. The documentary highlights how the Venezuelan intelligence services knew exactly what was happening before the boats even left the dock, which means these ‘master tacticians’ were being watched like fish in a bowl while they bragged about their plans on social media. Amateurs. It is one thing to be a soldier of fortune, but it is another thing entirely to be a soldier of misfortune who drags everyone else down with you because you are too stubborn to admit that the mission was compromised from day one. Failure. When the ‘invasion’ finally happened, it was less of a roar and more of a whimper, with the Venezuelan authorities picking these guys up off the sand like they were tourists who had lost their way back to the resort. Sad. The contrast between the Hollywood-style hype that Goudreau tried to build around Silvercorp and the cold, hard reality of ex-soldiers sitting in a Venezuelan prison is a stark reminder that life is not a movie, even if you try really hard to make it look like one. Reality.
Trump and the Puppet Masters
And let’s not forget the orange elephant in the room, Donald Trump, who famously said that if he were going to invade Venezuela, it wouldn’t be a secret and it would be a ‘real’ invasion, which is just his typical way of distancing himself from a failure while still trying to sound like a tough guy. Typical. While Trump and his administration denied direct involvement, the documentary suggests a much more blurred line between private contractors and government interests, showing how the culture of ‘plausible deniability’ allows powerful people to play with fire without getting their own fingers burned. Dirty. The way the U.S. government handles these types of situations is always the same: they encourage the chaos from the sidelines, provide just enough hope to the desperate to make them do something stupid, and then wash their hands of the whole mess when the blood starts to spill. Treachery. You have to wonder how much the Trump administration actually knew and how much they just looked the other way because they wanted Maduro gone and didn’t care who did the dirty work or how many laws were broken in the process. Corruption. This isn’t just about one botched coup; it’s about the entire industry of private military contractors who operate in the shadows, fueled by the egos of men like Goudreau and the political ambitions of leaders who want to change the world without having to deal with the messy consequences of actual diplomacy. Scandal. The film ‘Men of War’ serves as a post-mortem for a dead dream, showing us that the era of the rogue mercenary might be over, but the era of the political grifter is just getting started. Toxic.
The Human Cost of Ego
While we laugh at the stupidity of the plan, we shouldn’t forget that there are real people who paid the price for this madness, from the families of the men who were killed on the beach to the veterans who are now rotting in a foreign cell because they followed a leader who was more interested in fame than in their safety. Tragedy. Goudreau himself seems like a man haunted by his own failures, yet he still can’t quite give up the ghost of the hero he thinks he is, which makes the whole documentary feel like a slow-motion car crash that you can’t look away from even though you know how it ends. Painful. The irony is that by trying to bring ‘freedom’ to Venezuela, these men only succeeded in strengthening Maduro’s grip on power, giving him the perfect propaganda victory to show his people that the ‘imperialist yanks’ are both dangerous and incompetent. Backfire. It is a lesson that history keeps trying to teach us but one that we seem determined to ignore: you cannot force democracy from the barrel of a gun, especially when the gun is being held by a guy who is trying to secure a movie deal at the same time. Lesson. The documentary doesn’t just judge the men involved; it judges the system that produces them, the system that tells young men that their only value is in their ability to fight and then discards them when they are no longer useful to the state or the corporation. Brutal. In the end, ‘Men of War’ is a tragedy of errors, a story about what happens when the lines between reality and fiction become so blurred that people start dying for a script that was never even finished. Chaos. We see Goudreau in the film, looking older and more tired, still trying to justify the unjustifiable, a ghost of the man he once was or the man he thought he was. Hollow. The whole saga is a perfect metaphor for the late-stage American empire—arrogant, disorganized, and completely out of touch with the reality of the people it claims to be helping. Ending.
