As Tens of Thousands Die in Venezuela from U.S. Economic Warfare...

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez: “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”

May 6, 2019 | revcom.us

 

The U.S. is waging economic war on Venezuela. It is just as deadly as the shooting wars it finances all through the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, but you don’t see the blood and hear the screams.

Last week, the Center for Economic and Policy Research stated that U.S. “economic sanctions”—that is, economic warfare—against Venezuela have so reduced the availability of food and medicine that as many as 40,000 people have died in the past two years who would not have died if there were no sanctions. The U.S. did this by 1) almost totally stopping oil imports from Venezuela and pressuring other countries to do the same, 2) preventing Venezuela from selling any of its assets, and 3) preventing it from borrowing. By recognizing their puppet Juan Guaidó as the legitimate head of Venezuela (despite his never having been elected or even having run for president), the U.S. made Guaidó the legal owner of all funds and goods of the Venezuelan government.¹

This warfare has been accompanied by the constant threat of real war, of U.S. invasion if the government of President Nicolás Maduro should move against Guaidó, and/or if it violates some other supposed “red line” of the U.S.²

You expect—or you should expect—the mainstream Democrats to follow suit. After all, Obama began the “sanctions” in 2015, which Trump then escalated in 2017. According to the Associated Press, Trump persistently asked aides in 2017 why the U.S. can't just invade Venezuela? Sanctions became the “sanitary” way to do it. Forty thousand deaths later, the noose gets tighter every day.

And what about the Democrats? With the exception of Elizabeth Warren, no mainstream Democrat has opposed the economic warfare of the Trump regime, and even Warren calls for “free elections”—that is, invalidating the previous election and having new ones at a time when the U.S. holds the country’s economy hostage. The Democrats may sometimes speak in a softer tone—the better to bring along the antiwar people they’re in charge of corralling and domesticating—but as this chart makes clear, year in and year out they are just as vicious when it comes to enforcing U.S. imperial dictates.

But what about the “socialists” like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Surely, loving social justice and economic equality as they do, they will speak out against this one-sided economic warfare.

Actually, no. Bernie Sanders tries to keep his mouth shut on this, and so far he’s been allowed to succeed in that. Sanders does not want to alienate the more radical-minded people that he’s in charge of corralling. But when pressed, as he was on BBC recently, he will say that while the U.S. should not intervene militarily, it should “use its authority” to ensure “free and fair elections”—which is exactly the position of the U.S. and its tool Guaidó, who claim that Maduro’s election was illegitimate. And by the way, Bernie, what IS the “authority” of the U.S.—if not its murderous economic warfare and the threat of its military?!?³

Then there’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Violence is horrible,” said Ocasio-Cortez to National Review. Wow, what a courageous stand. But which violence, Alexandria, are you talking about? Because while the U.S. media highlights the suppression carried out by Maduro’s forces, it ignores the far, far greater violence of U.S. economic warfare. When pressed for clarity on this, she said that she’ll “defer to caucus leadership on how we navigate this.” “Caucus leadership” being Nancy Pelosi—who, surprise! supports removing Maduro and installing the U.S. puppet Guaidó.

The Democrats are an imperialist party that sometimes pretends not to be in order to rope in people who, to a degree, oppose what the U.S. does all over the world. The “socialists” like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are in charge of drawing in the disillusioned and the angry who are looking for a radical alternative. They talk “militant” on some things, but when push comes to shove they share the essential America-first mentality of the Republicans and mainstream Democrats—they just want a more equal share of the spoils. Their essential program shares the view of the narrator in the Bob Dylan song “Narrow Way”:

“We looted and we plundered on distant shores
Why is my share not equal to yours?”

When it comes to what America does to people all over the world... to the blood it sucks in Asia, Africa, and Latin America... Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, like their fellow Democrats, have no answer. They, too, fit the essential truth that:

The Republican Party Is Fascist

The Democratic Party Is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

This System CANNOT Be Reformed—It MUST Be Overthrown!

We Need an Actual Revolution

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1. The Maduro government, while claiming to be socialist, never broke with the imperialist system. This makes them especially vulnerable to the kind of blackmail now being practiced by the U.S. imperialists. For more on the false road of Maduro, and Hugo Chávez who preceded him, see “Hugo Chávez Has an Oil Strategy... But Can This Lead to Liberation?” by Raymond Lotta, revcom.us, July 1, 2007. [back]

2. See “Points of Orientation on the Situation in Venezuela,” revcom.us, May 3, 2019; and “U.S. Poses as ‘Humanitarian’ While It Weaponizes Starvation in Venezuela,” revcom.us, February 11, 2019. [back]

3. Sanders, by the way, also voted for U.S. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, sanctions that took the lives, according to the UN, of 5,000 children a month. [back]

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