Liberal and Democratic Party responses to US Imperialism in Venezuela are instructive

The US has been trying to undermine democracy in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez became president in 1999. Watch the documentary The Revolution will not be televised, which deals with the US-backed attempted coup in 2002.

This means that the Bush, Obama, Trump I and the Biden Administrations have all been viewing Venezuela as a pariah state, but this is an ideological position and is not rooted in what is happening on the ground in Venezuela. The US has militarily intervened in Latin America more than any other region of the world. Check out the list since 1890 and you will see that Latin America has the most.

Venezuela, like Chile, like Cuba, like the Sandinista revolution in 1979 or the Mexican revolution in the early part of the 20th Century, have been of great interest by the US either because of 1) threats to economic interests; 2) countries have adopted a political framework of Socialism; or 3) those countries, like Venezuela, have advocated for a Latin America that was independent of the US.

We have to see that Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan Maduro was nothing more than an an act of Imperialism. US foreign policy critics like Noam Chomsky have been saying for years, which is that the US government, regardless of who sits in the White House, will not tolerate any independent government in Latin America, which is why the CIA engaged in a coup in Guatemalan in 1954, in Chile in 1973, funded counterinsurgency terrorism in Central American in the 1980s,  supported narco-terrorist countries like Colombia for decades, and has been punishing Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

With Venezuela, as stated earlier, the effort to undermine Venezuelan sovereignty began 1999. Beside the US support of the attempted coup in 2002, the US has been supporting pro-US/pro-Capitalist candidates and organizations in Venezuela. The primary mechanism that the US government has used to subvert Venezuelan sovereignty has been the National Endowment for Democracy, also referred to as the NED. The NED has been at the forefront of the US campaign to get a pro-US/pro-Capitalist government in Venezuela over the past 25 years.

Liberal and Democratic Party responses to the US Imperialism in Venezuela

The response from Democrats and Liberals are not surprising. Look at the statement from Michigan Senator Gary Peters. In standard political speak, Peters makes several points. First, he claims that this is not what the American people want. This sounds lovely, but most of what the US government does is not driven by the public. Second, before Peters attempts to lay the blame on Trump he refers to the Venezuelan President as “a dictator and bad actor in the region.” Peters makes this claim, yet he never substantiates his claim. Third, Peters wants to make sure that US aggression/US Imperialism is done with Congressional approval. This is the so-called legal justification, which attempts to equate legal actions with actions that are just, which has rarely happened with US foreign policy. Just because Congress overwhelmingly supports a policy doesn’t make it just, like the unconditional support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. Lastly, Senator Peters and the Democrats want you to think that the US action against Venezuela was purely a Trump thing and not a US imperialism thing. Note that Senator Peters never calls what the Trump Administration just did in Venezuela as US Imperialism. He can’t, because if he did, then he would have to do the same thing when Democratic Administration engage in the sake time of naked aggression.

Rep. Hillary Scholten used similar arguments (on her Facebook page) to what Senator Peters used making her response about getting Congressional approval and never using language like US aggression or US Imperialism. Rep. Scholten referred to Venezuelan President Maduro as “an oppressive and illegitimate leader who has harm the people of Venezuela.” Like Peters, Rep. Scholten doesn’t provide any evidence to support her claims.

Then there is Senator Slotkin, the same person who recently told US military personal to not follow unconstitutional orders. Slotkin has not publicly told US soldiers to not obey orders to arrest foreign presidents or engage in US military aggression abroad. Slotkin also makes it about Congressional approval. Slotkin also states on her Facebook page:

“The President laid out his plan of regime change. He says he now wants to “run” Venezuela and, particularly, Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Maduro is a bad man, and the people of Venezuela deserve better. But we know that regime change isn’t as simple as removing one leader. While there are comparisons to the arrest of Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989, let’s not forget that the U.S. sent in over 27,000 troops and lost 23 service members in the process.”

Senator Slotkin’s example of the US invasion of Panama in 1989 is instructive. First, Slotkin omits the fact that the US government had been financing Noriega for decades prior to arresting him, since Noriega supported US Imperialism in Central America in the 1980s, along with cooperating with the CIA for allowing drug trafficking (mostly cocaine) through Panama and using Panamanian banks to lauder drug money. Senator Slotkin mentions that 23 US soldiers were killed in the 1989 US invasion of Panama, but ignores the more than 2,000 Panamanian civilians killed, which is well documented in the film The Panama Deception.

One last example of a liberal response to US Imperialism in Venezuela was from the Democratic Party front group Indivisible. The Grand Rapids chapter posted in an Email this morning the following:

“Last night, Trump ordered the U.S. Military to bomb and invade Venezuela and kidnap President Maduro and his wife. Maduro is being brought to New York to face trial. The Vice President of Venezuela is apparently on his way to Russia. Make no mistake about it: Maduro is definitely a bad guy but Trump’s unapproved-by-Congress attack on Venezuela is not primarily motivated by a desire to get rid of the corrupt ruler of another country. Instead, Trump has made his move to align with Putin’s efforts to destroy the Rules of International Order.”

This is an absurd and historically inaccurate assessment, especially the claim that Trump and Putin want to destroy international law. The reality is that the US and the former Soviet Union/now Russia have been violating international law since 1945, both during the Cold War and since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On top of that the GR Indivisible Email cites historian Heather Cox Richardson extensively. This is no surprise, since liberal love Heather Cox Richardson because she hates Trump. Since the rise of Heather Cox Richardson, which began with the first Trump Administration, it is instructive to note that during the Biden Administration she did not make it a point to critique that administration’s foreign policy, whether it was on the massive US military funding annually under Biden, maintaining over 700 US military bases worldwide, efforts to undermine Venezuela or the unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I’d suggest reviewing her articles going back to 2023 and taking note of the lack of reference to Biden funding and supporting genocide, as well as his allegiance to a war criminal: Netanyahu.

I would highly encourage people to look to independent media sources on Venezuela, such as https://venezuelanalysis.com/, https://www.democracynow.org/, https://www.counterpunch.org/, https://fpif.org/, https://www.dropsitenews.com/, https://theintercept.com/, and https://znetwork.org/.

I am also encouraging people to sign up for the GRIID Class on the History of US Foreign Policy since WWII, with details in the link.