U.S. justifies invasion with revised propaganda

In the 1980s, many of us who are old enough to remember watched with horror as the United States funded the right-wing government in the Salvadoran civil war that collaborated with death squads.

We watched the U.S. government launch a counter-revolution in Nicaragua, shredding the idealistic hopefulness that fueled the rise of the Sandinistas. We watched the 1983 Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada and the 1989 removal of Panama’s ruler Manuel Noriega.

Not once have I seen — with perhaps the exception of Panama — that our interventions produce a period of prosperity, peace and democratic governance. During the decade I spent in Mexico, when I was often viewing the world through the prism of international media, the goal of installing democracy seemed to be rarely achieved and more often than not a stated propaganda tool to justify intervention.

Labeling Venezuela a “narco-terrorist state” to justify colonization/occupation is, similarly, a propaganda tool. Venezuela is a “minor” cocaine-trafficking corridor only, with most of that drug produced elsewhere and headed to Europe.

But it isn’t just the use of a slightly-revised propaganda tool to justify a new intervention that has taken place. When the Trump administration bombed Caracas, kidnapped a sitting (or in this case standing) president, and announced with cold arrogance that it would sell Venezuelan oil and run the South American country, it announced it would no longer depend on discrete intervention, covert meddling.

It became the next step in the effort to redefine the international norms that have kept wars – even when they were bloody as hell — contained during the post-World War II era. President Trump is rewriting the rules: We’ll colonize and conquer brazenly, not just for access to resources, but to ensure the dominance of the U.S. dollar.

Some experts believe the United States wants to curb the growing influence of BRICS, the block of emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, the UAE, Egypt and Ethiopia that are making trade deals in other currencies.

“The power of the dollar has been part of America’s ability to dominate the world,” says Simon Hunt, founder of a strategic services firm that provides analysis on the global economy and China.

The military assault was also about plunging Cuba, which depends heavily on Venezuelan oil, into deeper crisis so that a government friendlier to the United States and more pliant can be installed, it seems.

Venezuelan American activist Michelle Ellner also notes that the Jan. 3 Trump administration press conference “wasn’t just about Venezuela.”

“It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again …If this stands, the lesson is brutal and undeniable: sovereignty is conditional, resources are there to be taken by the US, and democracy exists only by imperial consent,” she says.

Ellner, in a Common Dreams editorial, also reminds Americans that “the cost of this aggression is paid by ordinary people in Venezuela.”

This new era is scary, sad, and frankly, embarrassing for many Americans. That’s why we’re including voices of dissent  at ChicoSol — whether they’re local protesters or credible commentators. Protests have been emerging across the country, because like the people of Central America who became pawns in the Cold War, many Venezuelans – and Americans, too — may find themselves pawns in a new political order.

ChicoSol opinion columns reflect the writer’s view, not an official position of the publication. Submit your idea for a guest commentary to chicosolnews@gmail.com.