{"id":55489,"date":"2015-03-16T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55489"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:58","slug":"look-out-america-the-venezuelans-are-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/look-out-america-the-venezuelans-are-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Look Out America: The Venezuelans Are Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long time ago back in the 1980s I was living in New York, when I read a story in the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0about a group of armed Nicaraguan exiles, consisting mostly of former members of the Somoza National Guard, who were conducting military exercises in the Florida Everglades and receiving training from the CIA.<\/p>\n

I remember being genuinely amazed by this. \u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just the fact that the remnants of a defeated dictatorship were being trained in broad daylight by the world\u2019s most powerful democracy to overthrow a popular revolutionary government \u2013 what shocked me the most was that neither the NYT or any other media outlet seemed to think there was something odd or untoward about such behaviour.<\/p>\n

Those exercises were of course the first public appearance of the Nicaraguan Contras, who went on to inflict havoc on Nicaragua, bombing its harbours, murdering peasants, teachers and health workers in a bloodstained campaign of terror as part of the Reagan administration\u2019s covert operations policy of \u2018rolling back\u2019 revolutionary or pro-Soviet governments. \u00a0 The main focus of these efforts was Central America, where the US colluded with some of the worst regimes in the western hemisphere in an attempt to turn back a revolutionary tide that was surging through the region.<\/p>\n

This was a time when the Sandinistas were held responsible for \u2018subverting\u2019 El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, when many Americans believed that Nicaragua was a direct military threat to the United States, when the Reagan administration routinely insisted that the Sandinistas had to be held back because otherwise they would reach Texas. In 1985 Reagan issued a package of sanctions against Nicaragua<\/a>, which\u00a0he justified on the basis on Nicaragua\u2019s `continuing efforts to subvert its neighbors, its rapid and destabilizing military\u00a0build-up, its close military and security\u00a0ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union and its imposition of Communist totalitarian rule.`<\/p>\n

These accusations weren\u2019t just ordinary lies, they were big fat steaming whoppers, of the type that Reagan routinely delivered with his folksy sincerity. \u00a0 But they were also lies with a purpose. \u00a0 Because it is one of the unquestioned assumptions of US foreign policy that the America never acts aggressively, but only out of self-defence against aggression, even when that supposed aggression comes in the form of a tiny, civil war-ravaged country of three million people.<\/p>\n

This week Barack Obama joined that less-illustrious-tradition, when he\u00a0took the extraordinary decision<\/a> to issue an executive order declaring \u2018a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.\u2019<\/p>\n

We all know that Venezuela and the US haven\u2019t got on for some time, but\u00a0the best that can be said about language like this is that it leans just a little bit towards hyperbole and hysterical exaggeration. \u00a0A less charitable view might conclude that Obama\u2019s declarations were inane, dishonest, and devoid of any meaning beyond their usefulness as a marketing strategy\u00a0to launch a new campaign of regime change in Venezuela and a new round of sanctions aimed at undermining the Maduro government.<\/p>\n

It almost goes without saying that Obama\u2019s order is deeply hypocritical as well as semantically void. \u00a0 \u00a0Like Reagan before him in Nicaragua, Obama is at pains to point out that<\/p>\n

\u2018The order does not target the people of Venezuela, but rather is aimed at persons involved in or responsible for the erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations and abuses in response to antigovernment protests, and arbitrary arrest and detention of antigovernment protestors, as well as the exacerbating presence of significant public corruption in that country.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Not all these accusations are entirely false, though some of them are willfully exaggerated and distorted, and ignore certain facts that might shed further light on them, such as the violence of the opposition. \u00a0 Many of these accusations could be made \u2013 in spades \u2013 against some of the US\u2019s key allies, whether it’s Uzbekistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Egypt, but none of these countries have been designated national emergencies or threats to US national security.<\/p>\n

In 2005 the Uzkek dictatorship shot dead 700 demonstrators at Andijan, and the strongest condemnation from the US government was a polite call for \u2018pressure valves that come from a more open political system.\u2019 Ouch. \u00a0Suck on that Mr Karimov. \u00a0 And last year Egypt killed more than 1,000 protesters in a few days, and Obama cancelled plans to hold joint military exercises with the Egyptian military. \u00a0Burn, Sisi. \u00a0 Since then Egyptian kangaroo courts have been handing out death sentences to Muslim Brotherhood members like raffle ticket in two-minute trials that amount to considerably more than an \u2018erosion\u2019 in human rights guarantees. \u00a0No threat to national security there either.<\/p>\n

There is also the question of human rights \u2018erosion\u2019 in the US itself, a country where it is possible for cops to throttle a black man to death in broad daylight and not even get charged with manslaughter. \u00a0 Last year as many as 1,039 Americans were shot dead<\/a> by police. \u00a0Last month alone 39 Americans were killed in police shootings \u2013 four less than the 43 who died in\u00a0last year\u2019s demonstrations<\/a>\u00a0in Venezuela, some of whom were killed by opposition demonstrators. \u00a0The Maduro government did at least carry out investigations into those events and has promised to punish security officials<\/a> responsible for \u2018excesses.\u2019<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that the Venezuelan government\u2019s human rights record is beyond criticism or that its problems are invented. \u00a0 There is no doubt that Venezuela is in deep trouble right now. \u00a0The weaknesses of its state-sponsored redistribution have been ruthlessly exposed by the collapse in oil prices. \u00a0Inflation, high prices, soaring crime rates and shortages of basic goods are all combining to create a crisis that the opposition is keen to take advantage of.<\/p>\n

But one thing is clear: these problems are not the business of the United States, and they are not a threat to American national security. \u00a0 \u00a0And the real purpose of Obama\u2019s executive order was revealed in the statement from White House spokesman Josh Earnest, that \u2018The Treasury Department and the State Department are considering tools that may be available that could better steer the Venezuelan government in the direction that we believe they should be headed.\u2019<\/p>\n

US sanctions against Nicaragua were similarly intended to make the Sandinistas \u2018mend their ways\u2019 or rather \u2018cry Uncle\u2019 as Reagan once prosaically put it. \u00a0 But it isn\u2019t the role of the United States in the early 21st century to \u2018steer\u2019 Venezuela or any other Latin American government in any direction at all.<\/p>\n

Those days are gone, or at least they should be, and it can only be hoped that Obama\u2019s crude attempts to use human rights as a lubricant for new forms of imperial intervention will not bring them back.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Matt Carr –<\/em> I\u2019m a writer and journalist, living in Derbyshire England. \u00a0I\u2019m the author of four published books, <\/em>My Father\u2019s House (Penguin 1997), <\/em>The Infernal Machine: a History of Terrorism (New Press 2007), recently republished in the UK as <\/em>The Infernal Machine: an Alternative History of Terrorism (Hurst & Co 2011),\u00a0<\/em>Blood and Faith: the Purging of Muslim Spain (New Press 2009, Hurst 2010), and<\/em> Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent (New Press\/Hurst 2012).\u00a0 My latest book <\/em>Sherman\u2019s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War (New Press 2015) has just been published in the US. As a journalist, I\u2019ve written for various print publications including <\/em>The Observer, The Guardian, The New York Times, History Today, Race & Class, Geographical Magazine, Red Pepper and<\/em> New Politics.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 infernalmachine.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama\u2019s declarations were inane, dishonest, and devoid of any meaning beyond their usefulness as a marketing strategy for a new campaign of regime change in Venezuela and sanctions to undermine the Maduro government. Obama\u2019s order is deeply hypocritical as well as semantically void, like Reagan before him on Nicaragua.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}