[News] Venezuela - The War Without a War

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The War Without a War

By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/TedSnider>Ted Snider
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-war-without-a-war-by-ted-snider

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

There are no U.S. troops in Venezuela, but, make 
no mistake, the war is on. There is more than one 
way to change a regime. Recent history has shown 
the United States that the most obvious one, the 
one employed or permitted in Honduras, will not 
work in Venezuela. That has already been tried. 
When the U.S. backed coup took Chavez out in 
2002, the people simply put the popular leader back in.

So the U.S. seems to be turning to a subtler 
method that has worked for them before. The 
campaign has three prongs: media, government and 
diplomacy, and indirect military pressure. The 
target of the campaign is the September 26th 
National Assembly elections that will pit Chavez’ 
supporters against the U.S. backed right wing 
opposition. If the plan works, the opposition 
will take over the national assembly and perhaps even move to impeach Chavez.

The first prong of the attack is being carried 
out by the media. There is a large media campaign 
which is spreading lies and creating the 
impression that Chavez’ popularity is failing and 
that there is dissention in his government and in 
the army. It is spreading a picture of a nation 
in crisis under Chavez’ leadership. Despite the 
media misrepresentation, reliable polls still peg 
Chavez’ support as hovering around the usual 60%. 
Seemingly recognizing the strategy, Chavez has 
tried to call the opposition media’s bluff by 
challenging them, if they really believe his 
popularity is failing, to prove it by invoking a 
recall referendum. Recall referendums in 
Venezuela allow the people to recall elected 
officials if 20% of the electorate signs it 
(funny constitutional clause for a supposedly 
undemocratic dictatorship). Along with 
disseminating a picture of a government out of 
control, the international media also kicks in by 
increasing the volume on the discrediting calls 
that Venezuela is undemocratic and that Chavez is a dictator.

Meanwhile, alongside assassinations of union and 
more than 250 peasant leaders by right wing 
paramilitaries, violent antigovernment 
demonstrations are breaking out in the streets. 
The media is giving wide coverage to these small 
demonstrations, again creating the impression of 
wide spread dissent and failing support for 
Chavez. But while these demonstrations make the 
news, the international media is ignoring the 
massive, and much larger, pro Chavez 
demonstrations, creating a very misleading 
picture of popular opinion in Venezuela.

The media effort is supported by a political and 
diplomatic front. According to Frederico Fuentes, 
the right wing opposition in Venezuela is backed 
by the U.S. Mark Weisbrot says that while U.S. 
money pours into Venezuela, the government 
refuses to disclose whose getting it. And U.S., 
and even Canadian, diplomats and officials throw 
their contribution into the campaign. Hilary 
Clinton started it off on her recent trip to 
Brazil, firing insults at Venezuela, while the 
Brazilians diplomatically and wittily defended 
Venezuela from the American salvoes.

The third prong is the application of military 
pressure on those who might slow down Chavez’ 
Bolivarian revolution out of fear of U.S. 
reprisal. And the pressure is substantial. Obama 
has reactivated the navy’s Fourth Fleet, 
disbanded over half a century ago. It is now 
patrolling off the shores of South America. And 
on land, the U.S. presence has swelled with seven 
new bases in bordering Columbia and four in her 
neighbour, Panama. Thousands of troops now in 
nearby Haiti add to the presence staring Venezuela down.

Can this subtler approach to regime change work? 
A similar misinformation campaign did work in 
2007­just barely--when Chavez suffered his first 
defeat of any kind in a referendum on 
constitutional reform. But the attempt to bring 
down a government in this way is really an old 
plan, going back to the play book of the 
Eisenhower CIA. The pattern is eerily familiar and, therefore, ominous.

The first CIA coups were Iran in 1953 and 
Guatemala in 1954. In Iran, as in Venezuela, the 
media played an important role. The New York 
Times regularly branded popularly elected 
nationalist and democrat Mohammad Mosaddeq a 
dictator: just like Chavez. Other media outlets 
did the same and worse. The CIA created a false 
flood of anti Mosaddeq protests and ignited 
riots, allowing the local press, embellishing 
their stories with lies and accusations, to 
create the impression that the country was 
sliding into chaos. Again, all just like 
Venezuela. The coup in Guatemala a year later 
also involved a fake CIA radio station 
broadcasting fake reports to create the 
impression of popular unrest and military 
rebellion against the government. Here too the 
U.S. press and elected officials dishonestly 
vilified the popularly democratically elected 
Jacobo Arbenz. And here, too, as in Venezuela, 
there was the ever present military threat.

So a pattern emerges in Venezuela that history 
warns could be threatening. It all suggests the 
attempt to interfere in Venezuelan politics in a 
forceless, but no less subtly forceful way.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100330/8e8ce0c3/attachment.htm>