No Coup, No Sanctions, No New U.S. War
WAMM Newsletter Volume 37 Number 1 Winter 2019
We have seen the disastrous consequences of recent U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and, through its alliance with Saudi Arabia, in Yemen. U.S. intervention in Venezuela can only bring further hardship and suffering, [such] as followed U.S. support for the 2009 coup in Honduras that overthrew the elected government there and contributed to the stream of asylum-seekers now on our southern border seeking relief from that disaster.
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It reveals the deep cynicism of U.S. policy makers that they denounce what they call a dictatorial regime in Venezuela while providing unlimited support to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its murderous absolute dictatorship of the royal family. The U.S. also supports a host of other autocrats, authoritarians, absolute monarchs, and dictators in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, to name a few.
There is no case in which U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries has led to greater democracy and better conditions of life for the people.
In the case of Venezuela, the economic distress has been precipitated largely by the decline in world oil prices. Oil is the most important revenue source for the Venezuelan government. But Venezuela’s economic difficulties have been greatly compounded by economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the United States, beginning in March 2015 under Barack Obama. These have been explicitly designed to choke off Venezuela’s access to international markets and resources for the purpose of destabilizing the Maduro government and, before that, the government of Hugo Chavez.
The economic chaos the U.S. now points to in Venezuela as a justification for intervention is in large part a consequence of U.S. policy, which is designed to provoke popular unrest, sow divisions, and precipitate an uprising against the government.
This interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs serves the interests of wealthy elites and multinational corporations, not the interests of the Venezuelan or American people. It is always the people who end up paying for these interventions in suffering, blood, and treasure.
Minnesota Peace Action Coalition Statement on Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Plans
Americans protest US war-mongering policy in Middle East.
The President Trump’s announcement in December that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan was met with confusion and criticism from both parties in Washington. A month later, however, it’s clear the question is not how the troops will be brought home, but whether they will be brought home at all.
Trump has hinted that troops in Syria will merely be moved to Iraq and continue to be sent on illegal excursions into Syria – or relocated to the Mexican border to re weapons into Mexico at civilian asylum seekers. Airstrikes in Syria have actually intensified since Trump’s claim that troops would be withdrawn. In Afghanistan, revelations of new CIA-trained death squads show that Trump has no intention of ending America’s war in that country, either.
And in recent days, under pressure from war hawks in both parties, Trump administration of officials have declared that any withdrawal of troops from Syria will be put on hold all but indefinitely.
Trump’s initial announcement of a decision to bring the troops home was a response to the fact that vast numbers of people in the U.S. oppose the endless wars and militarism. His backtracking reveals that it was never more than an empty political stunt.
The only way wars end is when people mobilize to demand the troops be brought home. Instead of Trump’s fake withdrawal plans, the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition supports building an independent antiwar movement that demands a real end to the wars and U.S. militarism.
Troops Home Now – Out of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Off the Border!
Women Against Military Madness belongs to the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC).
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