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US Preparing for Military Aggression on Venezuela

Argentine sociologist Atilio Boron argues that when the U.S. denounces a country, it is often a pretext for intervention and regime change.

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Barack Obama, an ornamental figure in the White House, who was not able to impede a lunatic like Benjamin Netanyahu from addressing both houses of Congress to sabotage the talks with Iran on the country’s nuclear program, has received a strict order from the “military-industrial-financial” complex: he must create the conditions to justify a military aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The presidential order issued hours ago, and broadcast by the White House press office, establishes that the country of Bolivar and Chavez is an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and declares a “national emergency” to deal with that threat.

This type of declaration tends to precede military aggressions, either by its own hand, as was the case of the bloody invasion of Panama to overthrow Manuel Noriega in 1989, as well as the one issued in relation to Southeast Asia that culminated with the Indochina war, especially in Vietnam, starting in 1964. But it can also be the prelude to military operations of a different kind, in which the United States acts jointly with its European minions, grouped under NATO, and the region’s oil theocracies.

For example: the first Gulf War in 1991; or the Iraq War of 2003-2011, with the enthusiastic collaboration of Britain’s Tony Blair and Spain’s unpresentable Jose Maria Aznar; or the case of Libya in 2011, erected over the staged farce in Benghazi, where so-called “freedom fighters” — who later turned out were mercenaries recruited by Washington, London and Paris — were hired to overthrow Gadhafi and transfer control over the country’s oil riches to its masters.

More recent cases are those of Syria and, especially, Ukraine, where the much yearned for “regime change” (a euphemism to avoid talking about a coup) that Washington pursues ceaselessly to redesign the world — above all in Latin America and the Caribbean — in its image and likeness, has been achieved thanks to the invaluable cooperation of the European Union and NATO, and whose result has been a bloodbath that continues in Ukraine today.

Miss Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was sent to Kiev’s Maidan Square by Mr. 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (aka President Obama) to express her solidarity with the demonstrators, including the bands of neo-Nazis that later would seize power by storm, through blood and fire, and to whom the kindly official was handing out bread and water bottles to quench their thirst, to demonstrate, with such an affectionate gesture, that Washington was, as always, on the side of liberty, human rights and democracy.

When a “rogue state” like the United States — which it is because of its systematic violations of international law — issues a threat like the one we are commenting on, it must be taken very seriously. Especially if one remembers the persistence of an old U.S. political tradition that consists of carrying out coups that serve as pretext for justifying its immediate military response.

It did so in 1898 when it made the U.S. cruiser Maine explode in Havana harbor, sending two thirds of its crew to the grave and provoking the indignation of North American public opinion, which propelled Washington to declare war on Spain. It did so again in Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, sacrificing 2,403 mariners and wounding another 1,178 in that infamous maneuver. It did so again in the Gulf of Tonkin incident to “sell” its war in Indonesia: the alleged North Vietnamese aggression against two U.S. cruisers — later unmasked as a CIA operation — which caused president Lyndon B. Johnson to declare a national emergency, and, a little later, war against North Vietnam. Maurice Bishop, in the small island of Grenada, was also considered a threat to U.S. national security in 1983, and was overthrown and liquidated by an invasion of U.S. Marines. And the suspicious 9/11 attack to launch the “War on Terrorism”? The history could extend itself indefinitely.

Conclusion: Nobody could be surprised if, in the following hours or days, Obama authorizes a secret operation of the CIA, or some other intelligence service, or maybe the armed forces themselves, against some sensitive U.S. target in Venezuela, for example the embassy in Caracas. Or begin some other deceitful operation against innocent civilians in Venezuela — as in the case of “terrorist attempts” that shook Italy- the murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, or the bomb in the Bologna train station in 1980 — to create panic and justify the Empire’s response in “restoring” human rights, democracy and public liberties. Years later it was discovered that these crimes were committed by the CIA.

Remember that Washington birthed the 2002 coup in Venezuela, maybe because it wanted to assure for itself the oil supply before attacking Iraq. Now it is in the process of a two-front war: Syria/Islamic State, and Russia, and also wants a secured energy rearguard. Serious, very serious. This calls for the active and immediate solidarity of South American governments, in individual fashion and through UNASUR and CELAC, and popular organizations and political forces in our Americas to denounce and stop this maneuver.