The Dog That Didn’t Bark |
Sidney Paget, Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze,” Strand Magazine, Dec. 1892, p.646.
The crime
The crime last week — bombing a foreign country and kidnapping its president* – was nothing new. The U.S. did it in Panama in 1989 and Libya 12 years later, though in the latter case, the president (Muammar Gaddafi) was captured, tortured and killed by allied, local forces. The list of countries attacked, invaded or leaders deposed by the U.S. in the last 75 years is familiar to many Counterpunch readers. I present it here as dark poetry:
Guatemala, Grenada, Pakistan,
Somalia, Cuba, and Sudan.
Panama, Libya, Afghanistan,
Cambodia, Korea, and Vietnam.
El Salvador, Iraq, Iran,
Yemen, Nicaragua, and Lebanon,
Laos, Venezuela, and Republic Dominican.
Excluded are countries where the U.S. plotted coups or assassinations – mere bagatelles compared to the rest: The war against Vietnam killed some 2 million, not including 55,000 Americans. Since 9/11, according to the Brown University Costs of War project, U.S. violence has killed – directly or indirectly – about 4.5 million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan.
Except when it showcased enemy body counts early in the Vietnam War to demonstrate battlefield progress, U.S. government officials have generally minimized or denied death tolls. Where obfuscation was impossible, they absolved themselves by claiming that war was thrust upon the U.S., and that the invaded nation: a) was the aggressor; b) colluded with communists, Islamic terrorists or drug traffickers; c) threatened its neighbors and global peace; d) possessed weapons of mass destruction; e) endangered global trade and American prosperity; or f) used civilians as human shields. Never have high ranking U.S. officials admitted moral or legal culpability, even decades after the violence. The conduct of the Vietnam war, according to President Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, was marked by “mistakes” not crimes. Indeed, he said, the real “disgrace” was the American failure to adequately honor returning vets. No matter how the Venezuela adventure turns out, don’t expect any administration official to backtrack or apologize.
A surprising confession
The attack on Venezuela was premediated and unsurprising except in one, significant respect: U.S. officials, most notably the garrulous president, did not mask their motives, minimize the violence, or prevaricate – well, not much. The U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Trump said, half-truthfully, to gain control of its oil industry and repay American companies whose property was “stolen” by the former government. In fact, the nationalization law of 1976 was nothing like a theft. It was uncontroversial at the time, except to those who saw it as a surrender to U.S. and corporate interests. The Venezuelan government paid a billion dollars in compensation to the two major oil producers, Creole Petroleum (USA) and Shell Oil (multinational), and otherwise maintained existing service agreements. In 2007, President Hugo Chavez decreed that foreign oil companies receive a smaller share of Venezuela’s oil revenues. Some........