Andy Piascik
As the United States imposes sanctions on Russia and moves to do
likewise to Venezuela, it’s essential to keep in mind which country it
is that’s the most destructive and dangerous in the world today. When
such questions have been posed in international polls in recent decades,
the answer overwhelmingly is the United States. Not Iran, North Korea,
Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia or any of the many other nations the
ruling class and corporate media here regularly demonize, but the United
States.
People
in the global South know this all too well from the long and brutal
history of US foreign policy. Because we live in such a closed society,
however, where critical analysis of imperialism is by definition
excluded from discussions in Washington and the national media, people
here must search long and hard for such information. Should information
of this sort seep into the mainstream, ruling elites invariably vilify
it and those imparting it just as they vilify international figures they
regard as enemies.
According
to Washington, sanctions are being considered against Venezuela because
of repressive measures and violence that is attributed almost
exclusively to the government. In reality, counterrevolutionaries are
responsible for the majority of those killed including at least one
death of a motorcyclist decapitated by wire strung across a street. This
tactic was suggested by retired General Angel Vivas, who has become a
hero of the counterrevolution for his armed defiance of the government’s
attempt to arrest him for the motorcyclist’s death. Simultaneously, the
US has imposed sanctions against Russia and is threatening military
escalation in response to the incursion into Crimea.
Conveniently
left out of the narrative is any connection between Russia’s actions
and the coup in the Ukraine led by fanatically anti-Russian
neo-fascists, an effort supported by the US to the tune of $5 billion,
according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Also excluded
from discussions are the many military stations the US and its allies
have close to Russia, as well as the fact that practically every member
of the former Eastern bloc now belongs to NATO.
As
always, these events are presented in unambiguous black and white,
where we are the unquestioned good guys standing up for freedom,
democracy and liberty and the other side is evil incarnate. Hillary
Clinton, for example, played the always handy Hitler Card in reference
to Vladimir Putin, a card that in recent decades has been applied to
Noriega, Milosevic, Qaddaffi, Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden,
Assad and Ahmadinejad, to name just some. The Hitler Card has never been
used against Mass Murder Inc, the US’s longstanding club of dictators
that includes the Somozas, Suharto, Diem, Savimbi, the Duvaliers, Mobutu
and others too numerous to list, since they were loyal servants of
Western business interests. And it goes without saying that the Hitler
Card doesn’t apply to us even though in the world today it is US foreign
policy that most closely approximates the Third Reich’s.
In fact, the black/white narrative collapses immediately both
when today’s situations are probed and when history is reviewed. Since
documenting acts of direct US aggression and additional crimes committed
via financing, armaments and diplomatic support to client states would
require several large libraries, let’s restrict ourselves to just the 14
years of this century. In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly
in response to the 9/11 attacks even though none of those involved was
Afghan and most were Saudi. Invading Saudi Arabia wouldn’t do, however,
since it’s a staunch and very important ally. As Noam Chomsky has
documented, the Taliban offered to assist the US in tracking those
responsible for 9/11, including bin Laden, on the condition the US
present evidence. Because the US was determined to wage war no matter
what, the offer was rejected and the invasion of Afghanistan commenced.
Thirteen years and trillions of dollars later, the killing goes on,
expanded under Obama to include indiscriminate drone strikes, with no
end in sight.
In 2002, reactionaries representing Venezuela’s Super Rich put
tens of millions of dollars of funding from the CIA, USAID, the National
Endowment for Democracy and undoubtedly other US sources to use by
overthrowing the democratically-elected, immensely popular government of
the late Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan people immediately rose up and
defeated the coup but the funding, sabotage and subversion have
continued. Angry and frustrated at continual losses at the polls and in
the streets, the old oligarchs fight on absent any international support
other than that of the US and neighboring Colombia. The violence that
began last month is the most serious moment in Venezuela since the
failed 2002 coup, and despite its complete isolation the US has ramped
up its 15-year propaganda war against the Bolivarian Revolution.
In
2003, the US illegally overran Iraq, demolishing the country as well as
the argument used to justify the invasion that Hussein was a powerful
threat because of weapons of mass destruction. The US knew no such
weapons existed and the invasion has resulted in what some
international reports say is more than one million Iraqi deaths.
Coming on the heels of the 1991 US invasion and the ensuing years of
Sanctions of Mass Destruction, Iraq has been largely destroyed and is
now plagued by bitter internal fighting. Central to that fighting is
Al-Qaeda, which had absolutely no presence in Iraq but is now a
formidable force thanks to the invasion.
After
hammering Muammar Qaddafi for decades to turn over Libya’s weapons, the
US illegally invaded that country in 2011 not long after he complied.
At least 50,000 people were killed as a result including Qaddafi, and
Libya was plunged into chaos that continues to this day. Elsewhere in
the Mideast, the US continues to support Israel’s ever-expanding
occupation of Palestine and again finds itself on the same side as
Al-Qaeda and other terrorists in Syria as it attempts to do there what
it did in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
Since
the 1990’s, the US has supported mass killer Paul Kagame in Rwanda
while presenting him as a hero. In reality, the war in Rwanda began with
the 1990 invasion from Uganda by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, an army
Kagame soon became head of. Four years later, with peace talks underway,
the RPF killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana by shooting down a
plane on which he was returning from a negotiating session. Thus began
the most horrific period in the region, with mass killings on all sides
and the US undermining peacekeeping efforts and several potential
settlements so the RPF could win a complete victory.
Former
UN Secretary General for one puts the blame on the US for its support
of Kagame and the RPF. As reported recently in Counterpunch by Robin
Philpot, Boutros-Gali has said that “the Rwandan genocide was 100%
American responsibility.” Reports by a number of international
organizations, including several by the UN, concluded that the RPF is
responsible for more than one million deaths and possibly several
million in Rwanda. In addition, UN and other reports have found the RPF
responsible for the most serious atrocities during years of warfare in
the neighboring Congo. Edward Herman has called Kagame a “double
genocidist” while underscoring that the US made the killing possible and
business interests benefited most from it.
In Latin
America, in addition to supporting counterrevolution in Venezuela, the
US continues to lavish millions on Colombia in a decades-long War on
Drugs that is, in fact, a war against the people designed to destroy
opposition to domination by global capital. And in 2009, the US was
virtually alone in the world in recognizing the coup government that
came to power in Honduras in 2009 by overthrowing democratically-elected
reformer Manuel Zelaya. The coup and two fraudulent elections have
restored the oligarchy’s power while opponents are being killed in
alarming numbers by the military, paramilitaries and others suspected of
ties to the coup regime. The eradication of opposition is necessary to
the smooth operation of mining multinationals in particular, and Western
investments have increased dramatically since the coup.
US
violence is not restricted to other nations. Domestically, that is best
illustrated by the massive imprisonment of African-Americans. With the
highest incarceration rate in the world and the vast majority of
prisoners black as well as ongoing police and vigilante violence aimed
almost exclusively at blacks, the US is not so different from
apartheid-era South Africa. Perhaps international sanctions are in order
to turn the US into a pariah, and diplomatic isolation would help the
world’s most dangerous state get a dose of civilization.
The
people of the US bear a special responsibility to oppose both its
government’s aggression and its funding and arming of subordinates
engaged in terror. During the US-financed Central American killing
fields of the 1980’s, a campesino at the New York stop of her speaking
tour implored people here to “help us by changing your country.” Those
words echo louder than ever today and come from every part of the world;
it remains to be seen whether our collective reply to those cries is in
the affirmative.
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