Will the US do to Venezuela’s Maduro what they did to Gaddafi?
Something truly horrific is being planned for Venezuela. Generals are being bought and paid for, death squads are being organised and a major regime change operation is slowly gathering steam that, if executed, will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Venezuela and possibly the region beyond.
As the military build-up continues, as the US extra-judicial killings ramp up, as the CIA activates assets, as the US President and the military and political elites in Washington make weekly death threats against President Maduro, a vision out of North Africa looms before my eyes: the killing of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and what it meant for that now-benighted country. Nicolás Maduro’s sleep is no doubt troubled these days by this same image.
8.00 am 20 October 2011 – Predator stalking. A CIA Reaper drone spots a convoy of 75 vehicles speeding out of Sirte, hometown and last hold-out of Muammar Gaddafi, whose regime is crumbling before a combined NATO-Libyan rebel onslaught. The drone relays live images straight to NATO command centres in both Europe and the US – literally hundreds will watch what happens next from places like Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, NATO Southern Command in Naples, and, of course, the Pentagon. Pilots stand ready at bases close to the action.
8.05 am Thunderbirds are go!. Orders are relayed to an already airborne French Dassault Atlantique patrol plane which quickly picks up the convoy as it speeds through District 2, Sirte.
8.30 am NATO strikes. Caught in the open, the convoy is defenceless against the NATO assets that have gathered for the kill. A combination of French Dassault Mirage 2000D fighters and US MQ-1 Predator Drones tear through the convoy with laser-guided bombs and hellfire missiles.
9.00 am Rape-Murder. Gaddafi and his surviving body guards flee on foot, hiding in a stormwater pipe – but their fate is sealed. With the all-seeing Predator overhead, coordinating with British SAS and French special forces on the ground, there is nowhere to hide. The Brits and French lead rebel Misrata Brigade fighters to Gaddafi who is promptly raped using a blade. With the Brits and French looking on, he is finished off with a gunshot to the head. His last words, according to some accounts, are, “Do you know right from wrong? What did I do to you?” United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 had been enforced.
Or had it? Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch investigated the extrajudicial killing and called for an International Criminal Court investigation. They were ignored.
Afternoon, Washington – Veni. Vidi. Mortuus est. News reaches the US Secretary of State of the killing. Not realising she is still on-camera Hillary Clinton throws her head back and laughs. “We came! We Saw! He died!” she crowed triumphantly, her face expressing utter joy. The coordinated US-led assassination of the leader of a foreign state had, once again, succeeded.
Midnight for Libya. I don’t weep for Muammar Gaddafi. I weep for the Libyan people. Throughout my life, the Americans have launched countless wars and regime change operations against ‘very bad men’ – almost invariably making life for ordinary people vastly worse.
Who gives a damn about Libya today? Venezuelans should.
Following the triumph of NATO in Libya (Veni. Vidi. Mortuus est), Libya’s GDP per capita collapsed from $14,000 USD – one of Africa's highest – to around $4,000. Its health, education (88% literacy), housing and welfare systems, once the envy of the African continent, have been devastated. Infrastructure, once outstanding, is in ruins and tens of thousands have been killed in the interminable fighting that continues to this day. Women and children suffer widespread abuse, jihadists control significant parts of the territory, the collapse of effective government has opened the floodgates to both weapons and human trafficking. The Sahel region has been further destabilised. And the US, British, French, Italians and others who hold prime responsibility for this don’t give a damn.
The mainstream media has also moved on to other villains to demonise on behalf of Washington.
Libya’s collapse turned it into a major route for hundreds of thousands to cross the sea to Europe. For people who don’t like refugees, the Europeans sure know how to create them.
For good reason, several Caribbean and Latin American leaders are pleading with the Americans not to start a war on Venezuela.
Was it always about the oil?
Libya sits on one of the great oil reserves of the region. Guess who now controls these reserves? The same powers that sent their bombs to rain down on Libya. The pattern is stark and revealing. France was at the forefront of baying for a NATO attack (despite Gaddafi reportedly oiling President Sarkozy’s election machine to the tune of €50 million). Today France’s Total Energies is one of the prime beneficiaries, along with Italy's ENI and others, including US companies. NATO states pumping Libyan oil is classic petro-imperialism, resource imperialism, or what David Harvey (author of "The New Imperialism") called "accumulation by dispossession". As an aside, Harvey says he was partially triggered to write the book by the US invasion of Iraq (a war against another ‘very bad man' that ended up killing hundreds of thousands and devastating a once-prosperous country). He said he sought “to identify the underlying forces at work within the chaos of surface appearances. I sought simple truths amidst the flood of propagandist claims.” So should all of us.
Dominant narratives versus getting at the truth
Which brings us back to Trump and Maduro. Were the last elections in Venezuela rigged? Is Nicolás Maduro a narco-trafficker? Does he really head the "Cartel de los Soles" (Cartel of the Suns) crime syndicate? Is there such a thing? Is Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro also a drug trafficker as Trump has started to claim? Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? Were there really over 90 dead incubator babies killed by the Iraqis (No.) Did Hamas behead 40 babies on October 7th? (No!)
From the “bombing” of the USS Maine in Havana Harbour in 1898 – which the US empire used as a pretext to destroy the Spanish Empire – through to the blizzard of lies flying out of the White House today, we have witnessed propaganda as a stepping stone to imperial violence. How long will our compulsively gullible populations believe the river of lies that the Pentagon and State Department pour into our ears via the mainstream media every day? Does it really have to be Venezuela's turn to get the treatment?
Getting control of Venezuela and its riches
Trump has made no secret of US ambitions to get control of Venezuela’s riches. The fact that the US Department of State put a $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro head through its "Narcotics Rewards Program" smacks of resorting to a well-thumbed playbook especially as the Yanquis/Yankees have supplied no convincing proof.
More likely as a motive for US action is that Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves – over 300 billion barrels; it has an abundance of minerals to tap including gold (7,000+ tons), Coltan, diamonds, iron and bauxite. It is also a market and an important piece on a regional chessboard that the US wishes to push the Chinese and the Russians out of.
With an armada of US warships, over 100 fighter jets, thousands of missiles, dozens of attack helicopters massed off the coast of Venezuela, with thousands of ground forces mustering in the US-controlled states to the north, all the signs are pointing to a push to topple the Maduro government. There are many scenarios of how this plays out but the US will be reluctant to commit a major ground force to take and hold Venezuela: that job will likely fall to the opposition, led by Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Corina Machado and a coalition of the business elite and elements of the military who will do anything to restore and maintain the rule of the few over the many. Which leads to the topic of my next article: will the freshly-minted Nobel Peace Laureate run death squads in Venezuela?
Eugene Doyle
