Venezuela’s duly elected anti-globalist President Chavez was someone “the Washington aristocracy is unaccustomed to encountering from the servant class.” Why would any country put up with lectures from terror sponsoring US elites from an open borders lawless US? Bush admin. lectured Venezuela’s president in 2002: “The whole world is watching.“…Trump-Al Qaeda‘s Human Shield-in March 2019: “Russia has to get out“ of Venezuela....As if a president of a lawless US should tell anyone what to do. Democracy is America’s Deadliest Export.
2004, “US coup against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, 2002," William Blum (This is a chapter from Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire by William Blum)
“Jacobo Arbenz, Cheddi Jagan, Fidel Castro, João Goulart, Juan Bosch, Salvador Allende, Michael Manley, Maurice Bishop, Daniel Ortega, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Hugo Chávez … all [11] Latin American leaders of the past half century, all progressive, all condemned to suffer the torments of hell for their beliefs by the unrelenting animosity of the United States.
Chávez had been elected president [of Venezuela] by a wide margin in 1998, breaking a lock on power by the two establishment parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics for decades. He repeated the strong electoral showing in 2000.
But in the eyes of Washington officials, Chávez was no more than a man guilty of the following offenses:
He branded the post-September 11 US attacks on Afghanistan as “fighting terrorism with terrorism”, demanding an end to “the slaughter of innocents”; holding up photographs of children said to have been killed in the American bombing attacks, he said their deaths had “no justification, just as the attacks in New York did not, either.” In response, the Bush administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador. When she returned to Venezuela, she had what one US official called a “very difficult meeting” with Chávez, in which she told him “to keep his mouth shut on these important issues.”
He was very friendly with Fidel Castro and sold oil to Cuba at discount rates or in exchange for medical and other services. Chávez called for an end to the US embargo against Cuba. His defense minister asked the permanent US military mission in Venezuela to vacate its offices in the military headquarters in Caracas, saying its presence was an anachronism from the Cold War.
Chávez did not cooperate to Washington’s satisfaction with the US war against the Colombian guerrillas.
He denied Venezuelan airspace to US counter-drug flights.
He refused to provide US intelligence agencies with information on the country’s large Arab community.
He promoted a regional free-trade bloc and united Latin American petroleum operations as ways to break free from US economic dominance.
Chávez also opposed the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a globalization program high on Washington’s agenda.
He visited Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gaddafi in Libya. Secretary of State Colin Powell testified to Congress that Chávez visits “some of the strangest countries”, referring to the Venezuelan’s visits to Iran, Iraq and Cuba–all on the US list of alleged state sponsors of terrorism.”…
[Ed. note: Lawless US itself has long partnered with terrorists and today is a massive state sponsor of terrorism, spending $12 billion US taxpayer dollars in Syria 2014-2017 alone supporting Islamic terrorists efforts to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government. “Rebels [Islamic terrorist fighters] have been repeatedly condemned, for example this week by the UN, for murder, kidnapping, torture of prisoners and civilians, use of child soldiers, widespread assaults and corruption against civilians, all without remedial action from the rebel [terrorist group] Free Syria Army the West supports. [Terrorist] Rebel tactics of attacking and fighting from densely populated areas, itself a war crime, also inevitably result in heavy weapon use and civilian casualties -as now at previously peaceful Homs and Aleppo….Further arming the rebels will only increase such attacks. Those advocating arming also assume that because rebels are fighting a dictator, the [Islamic terrorist] rebels must themselves support democracy….Such concepts are largely alien to the Islamist fighters....This is why the [Islamic terrorist] rebels are backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar-sectarian dictatorships with no interest in promoting human rights or inclusive secular democracy. They do so to promote their own extreme brand of Sunni Islam, and because a crippled, possibly partitioned Syria isolates and weakens Shia Iran. This also promotes the interests of Israel….Many have good reason to detest the Assad government. But this is no reason to provide weapons to those with little regard for democracy and human rights whose victory may benefit Israel and Saudi Arabia, but which for the true interests of Syria’s people and the West may make matters very much worse.” (May 2013)
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US only gave Syria aid dollars to areas controlled by terrorists, refused to give one penny of aid to hungry Syrian children if they happened to live in areas controlled by Syria’s legitimate government…Trump
is even a human shield for Al Qaeda in Idlib, Syria, demands Syria not
try to rescue its own citizens from Islamic terrorists in Idlib: 6/2/19, Donald J. Trump twitter: “Hearing word that Russia, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran, are bombing the hell out of Idlib Province in Syria, and indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians. The World is watching this butchery. What is the purpose, what will it get you? STOP!”…9/5/18, “One Year After Calling Idlib “Al Qaeda’s Largest Safe Haven Since 9/11,” the US Govt is Trying to Save it,” Mint Press News, W. Webb: “Since last year, Al Qaeda’s presence in Idlib has only grown.”…“As
the Syrian government and its allies prepare to begin a military
offensive against the last [Islamic terrorist] rebel-held province
[Idlib] in the country, top U.S. government officials and even U.S. President Donald Trump have recently urged Syria to refrain from “recklessly” attacking the Idlib province, warning that it could result in a high civilian death toll. These recent statements of U.S. government officials have sought to portray Idlib as chiefly populated by civilians and benign opposition “rebels.”...In contrast to current government statements, Idlib is dominated by none other than the Al Qaeda terrorist group and that the province should be a major focus of U.S. counterterrorism policy given the threat that Idlib represents to [so-called] global efforts to fight terrorism….
Speaking
last July [2017]…Brett McGurk – the U.S. government’s Special
Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (Daesh,
ISIS)-called Syria’s Idlib province “the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” He then immediately added that the Al Qaeda presence in Idlib was a “huge problem” and had been so “for some time.””...Per WSJ, Al Qaeda has controlled Syria’s Idlib province since 2015.…It did so thanks to being flooded with elite US weapons: 10/12/2015, LA Times: ““Inside Syria, the view is different from the outside,” said Mohammad Rasheed, a spokesman for the Suqour al Ghab faction in Hama province, one of about a dozen groups that received TOW antitank missiles under a CIA-backed covert program….Some TOW missiles reportedly fell into Al Qaeda’s hands this year when another CIA-backed group, the Hazm Movement, was overrun by Al Nusra Front in northern Syria….Maj. Fares Bayoush, commander of Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, which operates in Syria’s strategic northwestern province of Idlib and has also received U.S.-made antitank weapons, said some level of coordination with Al Qaeda-style groups was unavoidable. “There is something misunderstood by world powers: We have to work with Nusra Front and other groups to fight the regime and Daesh,” Bayoush said in an interview this year….For example, Bayoush says that his [Idlib] group’s [US provided] TOW missiles played an important role in repelling [Syrian] government tanks during a March offensive in Idlib province spearheaded by an Islamist coalition called the Army of Conquest, which includes Al Nusra Front. The Islamists swept through much of the province and grabbed positions threatening coastal Latakia, Assad’s home province….In a June offensive to seize the city of Dara, roughly 70 miles south of Damascus, Islamist groups such as Ahrar al Sham and Al Nusra Front fought alongside Free Syrian Army factions organized under an alliance dubbed the Southern Front. The Southern Front [jihadists] receives ammunition and heavy weaponry from a CIA-led operations room near the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate’s headquarters in Amman, Jordan.”… “US Plan “C” in Syria: Make “Al Qaeda Central” the New Capital: “The Islamic State group may have lost all its territory in Syria but a rival jihadist group has been making gains in the last remaining opposition stronghold in the north of the country….In a dramatic takeover last month [May 2019], Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) [radical Salafist jihadists] swept through towns and villages in Idlib province, as well as adjoining parts of Aleppo and Hama. The group-which was known as al-Nusra Front before it broke off formal ties with al-Qaeda three years ago-expelled some rebel factions and forced others to surrender….In reality-US State Department-designated foreign terrorist
organizations like al-Nusra-have dominated [US backed] fighting against
the Syrian government since the conflict began in 2011 with the notion of “moderate rebels” a [US] propaganda ploy to obfuscate the true nature of US-backed militants....The US State Department itself in a 2018 amendment to its terrorist designation of al-Nusra would explicitly state (emphasis added): “In January 2017, al-Nusrah Front launched the creation of HTS as a vehicle to advance its position in the Syrian uprising and to further its own goals as an al-Qa’ida affiliate. Since January 2017, the group has continued to operate through HTS in pursuit of these objectives.”...US in 2015 was happily watching ISIS on the verge of capturing Damascus, made no effort to stop ISIS since US only cared about removing Assad. John Kerry in 2016 said, @:26: “The reason Russia came in [in fall 2015] is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh [ISIS] was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus. That’s why Russia came in. They didn’t want a Daesh [ISIS] government. And they supported Assad….We were watching. We saw that [ISIS] Daesh was growing in strength....And we thought Assad was threatened….We thought he might then negotiate. Instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.“…More: “Secretary of State John Kerry…shockingly admitted [at 26 min.] that US planners actually
welcomed the ISIS push toward Damascus, which they felt they could
leverage to put pressure on Assad to give up power to the US-backed
[Islamic terrorist] opposition…US dissatisfaction at the defeat of ISIS in Palmyra [by Putin and Assad] was also expressed by State Department spokesperson Mark Toner at a press briefing in March 2016, when Toner refused “to laud” the Syrian and Russian effort to liberate the city.“… “The [Islamic terrorist] rebel offensive in Idlib [in 2015] succeeded largely due to the lethal combination of Nusra suicide bombers and US-provided TOW anti-tank missiles. FSA [Free Syrian Army, an Al Qaeda group] commander Fares Bayoushfrom the Fursan al-Haq brigade explained to the LA Times [In Oct. 2015] “that his group’s TOW missiles played an important role in repelling [Syrian] government tanks during a March [2015] offensive in Idlib province spearheaded by an Islamist coalition called the Army of Conquest, which includes Al Nusra Front.”…Syria analyst Hassan Hassan observed in Foreign Policy [April 2015] that,“The Syrian [terrorist] rebels are on a roll,” and that “the recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift–thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles.”….The
close cooperation between [terrorist] FSA brigades and [terrorist]
rebels from the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front in Idlib was encouraged
by US planners.”…6/13/19, “End America’s Illegal Occupation of Syria Now,“ Doug Bandow, The American Conservative...
US continues to illegally occupy one third of Syria. “Washington decided that Assad had to go….One of the indirect beneficiaries of U.S. aid was Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate….“We [US taxpayers] also funded a group called Nour al-Din al-Zenki, until its members showed up on YouTube beheading a child, at which point the ‘moderate’ label no longer quite fit.”…Roughly 2,000 U.S. personnel occupy about a third of the country [Syria],
mostly in the north working with Kurdish forces [pale green area on
map]. At first, President Trump ordered the Americans home, but now hundreds or more will stay, according to his aides. But for what? The [supposed US] goal of shielding civilians was undercut all along by…the underwriting of [Islamic terrorist] insurgents [in addition to many takfiri, foreign fighters].…The president [Trump] recently objected to Syria’s increasing military pressure on Idlib [giving Al Qaeda the biggest human shield in the world-the US president-and preventing the Syrian government from rescuing its citizens and land from Islamic terrorists] the only area still held by [jihadist] insurgents (of a very nasty Islamist variety), because of the risk to civilians….
[Image: 12/30/2018, “US flag flies in Syria’s Manbij despite pullout notice,” AFP, Delil Souleiman] Some [Trump regime] administration officials would deny Damascus its oil and other resources [causing starvation, disease and death for innocent Syrians] in an attempt to pressure Assad from power….Invading and dismembering a country is an odd way [for US] to support the “rules-based international order.””]
(continuing): “Cháv upporters noted that Libya, Iran and Iraq are members with Venezuela of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in which Chávez has played a leading role.
And more in the same vein, which the Washington aristocracy is unaccustomed to encountering from the servant class. Uncle Sam has been inspired to topple numerous governments which displayed considerably less disrespect for him than Venezuela did.
Chávez, moreover, had been trying to institute all manner of reforms to relieve the suffering of the poor (who comprise about 80 percent of the population), a program not likely to win favor with a class-conscious, privatization-minded US government and Venezuelan upper and middle classes: restructuring the state-owned oil company, which he regarded as having become a state-within-a-state, to achieve greater national control over oil resources; reinforcing a constitutional ban on the privatization of the oil company; changing the agreements with foreign oil companies that were excessively generous to the companies; establishing a new progressive constitution; numerous ecological community development projects; enrolling over one million students in school who were previously excluded; increasing the minimum wage and public sector salaries; halting the previous government’s initiative to privatize Venezuela’s social security system; reducing unemployment; introducing a credit program for women and the poor; reforming the tax system to spare the poor; making health care much more available; lowering infant mortality; greatly expanding literacy courses; land redistribution in a society where two percent of the population controlled 60 percent of the land.
The coup
On April 11, [2002] a military coup toppled Chávez, who was taken to a remote location. Pedro Carmona, the chairman of Venezuela’s largest chamber of commerce, was installed as president. He proceeded to dissolve the legislature, the Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office, the national electoral commission, and the state governorships. Carmona then decreed that the 1999 constitution, which had been written by a constitutional assembly and ratified by a wide majority of voters, following the procedures outlined in the previous constitution, was to be suspended. On top of all this, the new regime raided the homes of various Chávez supporters.
And what was the reaction of the US government to this sharp slap in the face of democracy, civil liberties and law, that fits the textbook definition of dictatorship?
The Bush administration did not call it a coup. The White House term of choice was “a change of government”. They blamed Chávez for what had taken place, maintaining that his ouster was prompted by peaceful protests and justified by the Venezuelan leader’s own actions. It occurred, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, “as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people.”
The State Department also expressed its support for the coup, declaring that “undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chávez administration provoked yesterday’s crisis in Venezuela”.
And the US ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Roger Noriega, declared that “The people of Venezuela, loyal to their republican tradition and their fight for independence, peace and liberty, will not accept any regime, legislation or authority which contradict values, principles and democratic guarantees.”
But Noriega was ignoring the fact that the previous September [2002] the OAS had adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which expressly condemns the overthrow of democratically elected governments among its member states and requires specific actions by all members when this occurs.
The New York Times penned its own love note to the new government. In an editorial, the paper stated: “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator … [because] the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.”
Veritable grass-roots democracy the coup was.
Reversal of the coup
The coupmakers had bitten off more than they could chew by seriously underestimating the opposition to the coup and to the instant totalitarianism which followed; they had believed their own propaganda about Chávez lacking support – huge rallies in his favor erupted – an illusion on their part no doubt prompted by the heavy concentration of the media in the hands of the opposition, which regularly blacked out news favorable to Chávez. The post-coup support for Chávez induced elements of the military, including some who had taken part in the coup, to step in, retrieve Chávez, and bring him back triumphant to Caracas. He had been gone about 48 hours.
“Decisions to toss out the constitution and hunt down allies of Chávez,” wrote The Washington Post, “reinforced lingering fears held by many Venezuelans, including members of the military, that what had occurred was not a popular revolt but a coup by the business elite.”
The Bush administration voiced no misgivings about its support of the coup. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice quickly declared: “We do hope that Chávez recognizes that the whole world is watching and that he takes advantage of this opportunity to right his own ship, which has been moving, frankly, in the wrong direction for quite a long time.” She added that Chávez “needs to respect constitutional processes.”
Or as Monty Python legend, Terry Jones, put it: Chávez was ousted in “a free and fair democratic coup, only to be returned to office two days later on what seems to have been little more than the whim of the people.”
Prelude to the coup
Immediately after the coup, members of the military and of the new government said that the decision to force Chávez from power had been made six months earlier by a group of dissident officers in the Venezuelan navy and air force.
As the coup was being hatched, the United States met with all the key players, either in Venezuela or in Washington: Pedro Carmona, who became president; Vice Admiral Carlos Molina, Air Force Col. Pedro Soto, and several other officers who in February had publicly demanded Chávez’s removal; opposition legislators, and others. A US diplomat revealed that Molina and Soto had each received $100,000 from a Miami bank account for denouncing Chávez.
“We felt we were acting with U.S. support,” Molina said of the coup. “We agree that we can’t permit a communist government here. The U.S. has not let us down yet. This fight is still going on because the government is illegal.”
The officers who took part in the overthrow of Chávez “understood the U.S. State Department’s repeated statements of concern over the Chávez administration as a tacit endorsement of their plans to remove him from office if the opportunity arose.” … “The State Department had always expressed its preoccupation with Chávez,” retired military officer Fernando Ochoa said after the coup. “We interpreted that as” an endorsement of his removal.
However, American officials endeavored to make the point afterward that they had not been encouraging a coup. The White House spokesperson said that such meetings and conversations with dissidents were “a normal part of what diplomats do”. And The Washington Post reported:
“Members of the country’s diverse opposition had been visiting the U.S. Embassy here in recent weeks, hoping to enlist U.S. help in toppling Chávez. The visitors included active and retired members of the military, media leaders and opposition politicians. “The opposition has been coming in with an assortment of ‘what ifs,’” said a U.S. official familiar with the effort. “What if this happened? What if that happened? What if you held it up and looked at it sideways? To every scenario we say no. We know what a coup looks like, and we won’t support it.””
Of course, if the United States had been against the coup it would have informed the Venezuelan government of what was being planned and who was doing the planning and that would have been the end of it. Inasmuch as Washington normally equates democracy with free elections, here was a chance to strike a blow in behalf of democracy by saving a government that came to power through free elections on two separate occasions.
And Washington would not have financed the plotters.
Financing the coup
The National Endowment for Democracy was on the scene, as it has been for so many other Washington destabilization operations. In their reporting year ending September 30, 2000, in a clear attempt to weaken Chávez’s federal power, NED gave, amongst other Venezuelan grants, $50,000 to PRODEL, a Venezuelan organization, “To promote and defend decentralization in Venezuela. PRODEL will establish and train a network of national and state legislators and mayors to monitor government decentralization activities, advocate for the rights and responsibilities of state and local government in Venezuela, and analyze and debate pending legislation affecting local government.”
The following year [2001], announcing that it was expanding its program in Venezuela in response to “a process of profound political change” embarked on by Chávez, NED channeled more than $877,000 in grants to American and Venezuelan groups, none of whom supported Chávez, including $339,998 to provide training in political party and coalition building, and $154,377 to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV).
The CTV, long an anti-leftist, Cold War asset of US foreign policy through the AFL-CIO, is run by old-guard, corrupt labor leaders, angered by Chávez’s attempt to reform them. The organization was a key force in the work stoppages and protest demonstrations which galvanized opposition to Chávez. As in Chile in 1973, before the overthrow of Salvador Allende, large crowds of civilians were used to create a feeling of chaos, and to establish a false picture of Chávez as a dictator, providing some of the rationale and incitement for the military to then make a coup “for the sake of the country.”
As Mr. Chávez’s reform programs clashed with various business, labor and media groups, the [US] Endowment stepped up its assistance, providing some $1,100,000 for the year ending September 30, 2002, including $232,526 to the CTV.
CTV leader, Carlos Ortega, worked closely with Pedro Carmona in challenging the government and was invited by a [US] NED affiliate to Washington in February where he met with Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs, who was likely one of the masterminds of the move to topple Chávez.
Inasmuch as Venezuela is the fifth largest oil producer in the world, and the third largest supplier to the United States, it appears plausible to conclude that oil must be a significant factor in the US drive to effect regime change in the country. Yet Washington has opposed governments and movements throughout Latin America and elsewhere in the world with equal determination, without oil or any other resource being a factor.
Hugo Chávez is against the excesses of US foreign policy and globalization and has let the world know this, which makes it plain to Washington that he’s not of suitable client material. For the empire to let him get away with this would be to set a very bad example for other non-believers.
Since the debacle of 2002, Chávez’s natural enemies at home and in Washington have not relaxed their crusade against him. Opponents have been trying to unseat him through a recall referendum, a drive that is funded in part, if not in full, by, yes, The National Endowment for Democracy. NED gave a grant of $53,400 to an organization called Sœmate, which appears to be running the referendum campaign. The NED grant document, after castigating Chávez for polarizing Venezuelan society, specifies that Sœmate will “Develop a net of volunteers and [apartidistas] trained to work in elections and in a referendum … [and] promote popular support for the referendum.”
Imagine if during the recent referendum in California it was disclosed that the Venezuelan government was funding the movement to recall the governor.
A few weeks before the recall was to take place on August 15, 2004, former president Carlos Andres Perez, a leading member of the old guard, said in a newspaper interview that “the referendum would fail and that violence was the only way for the opposition to get rid of Chávez.”
Notes
1. New York Times, November 3, 2001
2. Washington Post, February 23, 2002, p.18
3. Financial Times (London), September 26, 2001
4. Washington Post, April 13, 2002, p.1
5. Ibid; Stratfor’s Global Intelligence Update, May 27, 1999
6. Washington Post, April 13, 2002
7. Stratfor’s, op. cit.
8. Washington Post, April 13, 2002
9. Gregory Wilpert, “An Imminent Coup in Venezuela?”, ZNet Commentary, April 11, 2002, [link inactive, here is Wilpert’s CV] Wilpert was a Fulbright scholar in Venezuela; Conn Hallinan, “U.S. cooking up a coup in Venezuela?”, San Francisco Examiner, December 28, 2001
10. Washington Post, April 15, 2002, p.1
11. Ibid., April 13, 2002, p.17
12. State Department press statement, April 12, 2002
13. Agence France Presse, April 13, 2002
14. New York Times, April 13, 2002, p.16
15. Washington Post, April 15, 2002, p.1
16. The Associated Press, April 14, 2002
17. Washington Post, April 14, 2002, p.1
18. The Times (London), April 17, 2002; Washington Post, April 17, 2002, p.8, April 18, p.17 ($100,000)
19. Washington Post, April 21, 2002, p.1
20. Ibid., April 14, 2002, p.1
21. Ari Fleischer, White House press conference, April 16, 2001
22. Washington Post, April 13, 2002, p.1
23. National Endowment for Democracy, Annual Report 2000, p.55
24. Ibid., 2001, p.49
25. Ibid., 2001, p.54-5
26. Kim Scipes, “AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Déja Vu All Over Again”, Labor Notes, April 2004
27. National Endowment for Democracy, Annual Report 2002, p.61-2
28. New York Times, April 25, 2002; The Observer (London), April 21, 2002
29. See http://venezuelafoia.info to view the NED documents. [Link inactive, more information at Venezuelanalysis, 2/10/2004]
30. Washington Post, July 26, 2004, p.16.
“This is a chapter from Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire by William Blum.”
……………………………….. Added: “America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy,” by William Blum, 2013
“For over 65 years, the United States war machine has been on auto pilot. Since World War II, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well, and that America’s motives in [allegedly] spreading democracy are honorable, even noble. In this startling and provocative book from William Blum, one of the United States’ leading non-mainstream chroniclers of American foreign policy and author of the popular online newsletter, The Anti-Empire Report, demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, unless this fallacy is unlearned, and until people understand fully the worldwide suffering American policy has caused, we will never be able to stop the monster.”
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