A coup, you keep saying?

My take? Bring it on.

In my previous post, I copy/pasted a write-up by Michael Z. Williamson about the rumors of an impending military coup to stop Trump from being a president again. He makes an impeccable case about its failure, and I feel I can add a couple of points since I was in Venezuela during two failed coups and the country has a tradition of coups now and then.

On February 4, 1992. Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez launches Operacion Zamora which sought to bring down the democratically elected presidency of Carlos Andres Perez. It involved close to 2,400 military personnel from Lt. colonels to soldiers and the use of light armored vehicles. No air support.

It failed.

The post-mortem of this first attempt found out that this was not just the toppling of a president, but its outright assassination as they feared keeping him alive would raise people against the coup and its leaders. And decapitating the commander in chief would have sent military leadership into chaos.

This coup was years in the making because the leaders involved were smart about keeping a low profile, they were in fact as fifth column of officers who had been seduced by the revolutionary beliefs of the usual Latin-American communists, including one Fidel Castro.

For a coup to succeed, it needs two defined goals to be achieved: The first one is the control of the seat of power and its holder. The second is to control the means of information so it is your side the one revealing the news to the people and with your spin.

The day of the coup, one section of the Rebels (to give them a name) were set up near the Presidential Residence of La Casona in order to ambush the motorcade bringing the president back from a nearby airport.

The first glitch happened because the president’s time of return was delayed or not known by the Rebels and they were waiting most of the day inside buses stationed in the parking lot of a neighboring park. It was not unusual to see military personal doing drills or the military band practicing tunes in that place since the Presidential Residence guard is military, but what seems raised a few eyebrows was that they stayed too long and never left the buses. Some rumors, unconfirmed but from very decent sources say that foreign personnel from nearby embassies who used the park for jogging were the ones who gave notice to their respective governments that something was amiss and as I heard it, two European governments were the ones that raised alarms.

Somehow, the president was informed of the possibility of a coup, but he still landed, and a trick was played on the Rebels: The main motorcade took a different route and entered the Presidential Palance via a tertiary entrance. When the Rebels found out that the motorcade actually went inside the compound, they had to go for a frontal assault on the place which failed.

Wall surrounding the Presidential Residence after the attack pockmarked by bullet holes.

As for the second goal, the control of information by the Rebels also failed

Venezuela is a country the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined and in 1992 (pre-Internet) it had no real cable TV system, just four TV stations which only one of them had full nationwide coverage: VTV Channel 8 which was and still is government owned. It was logical to go after VTV and seize it which is what the second Rebel section did and it was a bloody mess, wounding and killing several people even though they faced no resistance of any kind. After taking control, they demanded a pre-recorded video announcing the coup to be played and the station personnel did so, but some unknown hero left the transmission for the city of Caracas up but managed to cut off the signal to the relay stations outside the city. The Rebels could see the message on local TV sets but were ignorant that nobody else in the country, including other military posts in the interior were not able to see their “success”

Now comes the counter-gambit by the government: The President was never in the motorcade that went to the residence, but was whisked away to another TV station where he set up a command post, got in contact with military leaders across the nation, especially those with bases near Caracas and began the counter coup by appearing on limited nation TV coverage declaring the coup a failure and calling for the rest of the Military and police forces to resist counter the attack. That announcement was the relayed to the remaining TV station and radio stations all over the country picked it too. The information momentum for the Coup was lost.

That the Rebels were confused is understating it. It was so bad they somehow thought the President was transmitting from a small TV studio from the Presidential Palace of Miraflores several miles away and re-directed their efforts.

Attack on the presidential palace of Miraflores

By now, an issue arises within the Rebel side: While the leadership has been in cahoots and are politically oriented by the same book, most of the non-coms and the soldiers are just following a set of orders that had nothing to do with a coup. They were lied to for obvious reasons of security. But now with the shift of targets and the information coming in that they are in fact “the baddies,” desertions start to happen or after being confronted by loyal forces, they surrender.

VTV Channel 8 is liberated, news starts to freely flow and the popular sentiment is firmly against the coup especially when the bodies of those killed are shown on all TV stations. Chavez and his leadership then make the smartest decision in 48 hours of military clownsmanship and surrender without any resistance. The first mistake was then made by the military: They captured him alive and let him talk during his perp walk. Again, rumors say that the President gave orders to kill them on sight, but fellow military leaders followed “the legal rules” after he surrendered beginning the downfall of the old democratic Venezuela.

There was a second coup attempt in November of 1992, but it was a failure before it even started: The intelligence services were finally in gear and the plan was to let them try to see who else from leadership was missing. This time they “had” air support, but it was misdirection to flush out traitors as the planes’ weaponry (F-16s and OV-10s) was disabled and whatever ground forces they had were infiltrated before the second coup. Everybody involved was arrested.

Disabled bomb used in the second coup dropped in front of the Presidential palace.

This is obviously a simple summary of what happened, but it is also representative of what coups are like. How does it translate to a coup in the US? It does not in this day and age.

Can a group of people plan an attack and kill POTUS? Yes. The Secret service will acknowledge it and the pray every day that somebody says something out of turn or make a mistake so they can prevent such event.

But the point of a coup is to seize power and even the killing the President and the rest of the succession line could not accomplish that. Why? Because unlike Venezuela and other countries with a history of coups, power is not concentrated 100% with POTUS or the D.C. machinery. We are a Federation where the states do a decent job of governing themselves and it is impossible for the takers of power to seize the White House and D.C. and say, “we are in charge now. Obey us.” at least not with the rest of the country tore between gales of laughter and desires to Ceausescu the hell out of the interlopers.

OK, let’s say that governors from Democrat States lockstep behind the Coup leaders. How many would that be?

I am pretty sure Virginia would split fast and only leave the part touching D.C. as blue and that way the Northeast is an isolated island of insurrectionist. And if we do by county rather than state, things do not get better.

Other than the Coup leaders gaining access to nukes and threatening to use them against citizens, they are not going to have a meek and quiet population following their orders. Plus, I imagine even in deep blue locations, there would be a distinct amount of democrat voters who would reject a coup no matter who originated it and who it was directed to.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the people you will try to control is composed by citizens owning close to half a billion firearms and making them bigger than the top 10 armies in the world combined? Yeah, any idea of full country control goes out the moment local party leaders and operatives start showing up in different states of decomposition through the nation.

And how are the coup planners intending to control the flow of information? Old Media was murdered last election after 8 years of inefficient attacks against Trump, they are all minor emperors without clothes. Other than shutting down the Internet which they cannot do unless they plan to bore a hole on their own boat and sink with it, there is nothing they can do to “stop the signal” to quote a famous TV show. Information will get out and not the one the coup planners have in mind.

At best what a coup will do is to fundamentally alter the politics of the country. A full reshaping of the military by removing anything and anybody in uniform with political twists and not related to the defense of the country. And then it would be the end of the Democratic party as it stands now or at least it would be flushed of all the socialist crap that has been controlling the institution since the Clinton Era. That will only happen if the Republican suddenly develop a titanium backbone and push for that purge.

So, in my very uninformed and amateur opinion, no traditional coup will happen in the US. However, be wary of people within the Republican party willing to betray the results of the election for profit and for membership in the infamous D.C. Swamp. Legend says that The Great Wall of China was never breached by warfare but by bribing guards and officials to leave a gate unattended. Effete humans will always be the weak link in any security system.