Obama Channels His Inner Reagan on Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

March 11, 2015

How to Create an “Extraordinary National Security Threat”

Obama Channels His Inner Reagan on Venezuela

by MARK WEISBROT


On Monday, the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.

It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?

Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.

That was the approach of President Ronald Reagan in 1985 when he made a similar declaration in order to impose sanctions — including an economic embargo — on Nicaragua. Like the White House today, he was trying to topple an elected government that Washington didn’t like. He was able to use paramilitary and terrorist violence as well as an embargo in a successful effort to destroy the Nicaraguan economy and ultimately overturn its government. (The Sandinistas eventually returned to power in 2007 and are the governing party today.)

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/11/obama-channels-his-inner-reagan-on-venezuela/

[SolutionisSolidarity]

1. After Honduras, I knew what to expect from Obama's foriegn policy.

These sanctions are ridiculous, and that they are being imposed only reinforces the fact that what's happening in Venezuela is engineered. Saudi Arabia is beheading people for witchcraft meanwhile Obama is moved to action because Venezuela is insufficiently tolerant of people whose mode of protest includes improvised explosives, trip wires, and wholesale shutting down traffic across entire cities for weeks on end. No one, including us, tolerates these tactics, and yet Venezuela deserves to be economically isolated and starved into obedience for their "crimes".

[Marksman_91]

2. The sanctions don't affect the Venezuelan people, only certain individuals in the government

And even then, only their assets under US jurisdiction are affected, which makes you wonder if they have any at all when the US is their supposed sworn enemy.