{"id":55590,"date":"2015-03-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55590"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:57","slug":"how-exciting-the-birth-of-a-new-official-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/how-exciting-the-birth-of-a-new-official-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"How Exciting: The Birth of a New Official Enemy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 13, 2015 – <\/em>There are few events more exciting in people\u2019s lives than the birth of a child.<\/p>\n

Similarly, there is always a tremendous air of excitement that comes with the birth of a New Official Enemy of the U.S. national-security state.<\/p>\n

This past week, the American people got to experience this exciting event in the life of the national-security state. Through an official decree issued by President Obama declaring that Venezuela now poses a grave threat to the \u201cnational security\u201d of the United States, a new official enemy \u2014 Venezuela \u2014 was brought into existence as the latest Official Enemy of the U.S. Empire.<\/p>\n

How exciting is that!<\/p>\n

How exactly does Venezuela pose a grave threat to U.S. \u201cnational security\u201d? Unfortunately, Obama didn\u2019t exactly make that clear, but who cares? What matters is that United States has a brand new member of the Official Enemy family.<\/p>\n

Making Venezuela a new Official Enemy enabled Obama to unilaterally impose sanctions on select officials within the Venezuelan government. But as the Iraqis, Iranians, Cubans, Russians, North Koreans, and others will attest, limited sanctions are just the beginning. Gradually, Obama will use his decree powers to expand his Venezuelan sanctions with the aim of causing as much economic harm to the Venezuelan people as possible.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the purpose of the sanctions? The same purpose sanctions served in Cuba, Iraq, and others: regime change. The idea is that by economically strangling the Venezuelan people to the maximum extent possible, they will oust Maduro from power and replace him with a pro-U.S. dictator, perhaps even through a military coup, like in Chile.<\/p>\n

And make no mistake about it: No amount of death and destruction is too small in the attempt to achieve regime change. Recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright\u2019s infamous declaration that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions against that country were \u201cworth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget what the U.S. national-security state did in Chile. President Nixon ordered the CIA to make the Chilean economy \u201cscream.\u201d The CIA\u2019s actions, combined with the socialist economic policies of elected Salvador Allende, sent the Chilean economy into a tailspin, causing the Chilean people to greet a military coup with open arms, a coup that was orchestrated by the U.S. national-security state.<\/p>\n

Today there are people who still love, glorify, and extol Gen. Augusto Pinochet\u2019s long unelected military dictatorship in Chile that replaced the Allende administration. They praise the dictatorship for its \u201cfree-market\u201d economic policies, notwithstanding the fact that the dictatorship proceeded to kidnap, round up, incarcerate, rape, torture, disappear, or execute some 40,000 innocent people \u2014 that is, people whose only \u201ccrime\u201d was being a supporter of Allende or a believer in socialism.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting is that the Pinochet lovers are very quiet during this exciting time of a birth of Venezuela as a new Official Enemy of the national-security state. Why so? Wouldn\u2019t you expect them to be calling for expanded sanctions on Venezuela in the hopes of bringing another pro-U.S. military dictatorship to Latin America?<\/p>\n

After all, Maduro\u2019s socialist policies are no different from those of Allende (and, well, for that matter from those of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon). Maduro is a friend of Cuba\u2019s Fidel Castro, as Allende was. And Maduro is independent of the U.S. Empire, as Allende was.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t you think that the Pinochet lovers would be screaming to the mountaintops for another U.S. intervention, one that would oust Maduro from office and install another Pinochet-like dictatorship in his stead? Why the silence?<\/p>\n

Suppose you knew as a fact that a pro-U.S. military dictatorship in Venezuela would kidnap, incarcerate, rape, torture, disappear, or kill 40,000 Venezuelan supporters of Nicolas Maduro and, at the same time, would reject Maduro\u2019s socialist economic policies and adopt \u201cfree-market\u201d economic policies.<\/p>\n

Which of the following two choices would you make:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The U.S. government leaves Venezuela alone to muddle through its socialist economic chaos until its next presidential election?<\/li>\n
  2. The U.S. government intervenes in Venezuela by trying to make economic conditions worse for the Venezuelan people and then orchestrate a military coup, just like it did in Chile?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Who would select #2? I\u2019ll tell you who: the Pinochet lovers would. They\u2019d say that the concentration camps and military dungeons and the rape, torture, disappearance, or execution of 40,000 Venezuelan people who believe in socialism and interventionism would be worth the \u201cfree-market\u201d policies that the military dictatorship would bring to Venezuela. Isn\u2019t that what they say about Chile?<\/p>\n

    I say: No amount of \u201cfree-market\u201d economic policies can justify one single rape, torture, or murder, much less 40,000 of them.<\/p>\n

    I say: the U.S. government should butt out of Venezuela\u2019s affairs (and every other country\u2019s affairs).<\/p>\n

    Hasn\u2019t the U.S. national-security state done enough damage to people in foreign countries? When are the American citizenry going to finally say to the national-security establishment: \u201cEnough is enough!\u201d<\/p>\n

    The worst event in the history of the United States was the birth of the national-security state. It was akin to the birth of Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    ________________________________<\/p>\n

    Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    Through an official decree by President Obama declaring that Venezuela now poses a grave threat to the \u201cnational security\u201d of the United States, a new official enemy \u2014 Venezuela \u2014 was brought into existence as the latest Official Enemy of the U.S. Empire. How exciting is that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55590","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=55590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}