Does the U.S. and its corporate/war profiteer masters pose a serious threat to the national security of Venezuela?
The answer to that is "yes." The U.S. has spent billions of dollars to militarize and dominate its "circle the wagons" region in Latin America--Central America/the Caribbean--and wants to include Venezuela, with its vast oil reserves (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to the USGS) as part of the southern rim of that circle. This includes billions of our tax dollars spent on building U.S. military bases and "forward operating locations" wherever the U.S. can subvert the sovereignty of LatAm countries and get boots on the ground (in Honduras, for instance, with a big post-coup, U.S. mlitary ramp-up, and, for another instance, major U.S. military presence/activity in Colombia which shares a long border with Venezuela), more billions on using the "war on drugs" as its avant garde for militarization and domination, on training, funding and infiltrating LatAm militaries and police forces, on funding rightwing groups and causes through entities like the USAID (arm of the CIA), and on propaganda, subversion and dirty tricks.
A good portion of these U.S. resources and activities are aimed at toppling Venezuela's democracy, and are aimed in general at toppling Venezuela-allied leftist governments and/or "dividing and conquering" the great leftist democracy alliance that has emerged in South America (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru and, until the recent rightwing and probably U.S.-contrived coup, Paraguay) and into Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras until the U.S.-enabled coup--and they are working on a coup in El Salvador). One more item: Mexico would have a leftist government if not for election fraud in the previous election and in this recent one, and, as in Colombia, the U.S. "war on drugs" is doing its job of brutalizing the society to destroy civil life and democracy.
No one in Latin America is plotting to topple the U.S. government. They just want to be left alone, to enjoy the general prosperity that leftist governments are creating, in the countries where democracy is working, and to control their own affairs.
Obama's statement that Chavez is not a serious threat to U.S. national security is kind of like saying that California is not a serious threat to U.S. national security. It is an odd statement, way of whack with reality. How has Chavez threatened the U.S.? There is NO threat. So, saying that there is no "serious threat" is weird. But this is common, nowadays, in U.S. foreign policy. The debates about it take place within the military-industrial elite, with only parts of it visible to the rest of us, and these debates have nothing whatever to do with us--the 99%--and we have no say in them. The only people who have a say are the execs and big investors in the transglobal corporate monsters who run the U.S. government and their tightly entwined war profiteers.
Exchanges like this--Obama saying that Chavez is "not a serious threat" and the Miami mafia frothing at the mouth at that evil dictator Chavez--are the result of internal debates about how to topple Chavez (not whether or not to do so), about which there is a significant difference between the methods of the Bushwhacks and the Obama/Panetta (Bush Senior-connected) team. The Miami mafia in Congress met way back in 2010 to advocate invading Venezuela. Panetta doesn't do invasions. He does subversions. (That is the main difference.)
Which brings me to the phrase "U.S. national security." This phrase is in code. What it really means is our transglobal corporate monsters' and war profiteers' FINANCIAL interests--for instance, in Venezuela's oil, or Honduras' telecommunications, or Bolivia's lithium, or Colombia's cocaine (Big Pharma legalization plan), or in creating slave labor forces (and eliminating trade unionists) or in "privatizing" public services and looting local economies. Advancing these interests has NOTHING TO DO with our safety as people or as a country. Indeed, the opposite is true--these interests also exploit us and U.S. government actions to serve these interests put us in danger by creating enemies and hatred against us around the world.
Understand the code. When Obama, as the spokesperson for U.S.-based transglobal interests gets in a public fight with a faction of the far right that also serves those interests, neither of them is really talking about "U.S. national security." They are talking about Exxon Mobil or Drummond Coal or Bechtel or Chiquita or Dyncorp or the Banksters or (if my guess is right, regarding the Miami mafia) the big, favored drug lords whose business has been disrupted by leftist governments.
We may favor Obama/Panetta policy over Bushwhack/Miami mafia policy, by stacking up the numbers of U.S.-instigated or U.S.-organized-funded murders around the world. Both policies are bloody, but Obama/Panetta is a lot less bloody. So there you are. That's our "choice" (as if we have one). We can choose so-called "targeted" drone bombing murders and murder-by-proxy (arming "rebel" groups, etc.) and bribery/subversion, or outright war in which hundreds of thousands of people are murdered. But when these powers talk to each other about the level of murders required to serve these elite interests, the reality of our lives (having to pay for it, in more ways than one) and the realities of the other affected peoples' lives are not a consideration. Venezuelans have chosen the Chavez government, time and again, by big majorities, in an election system that is far, FAR more honest and transparent than our own, because the Chavez government is a "New Deal"-like government. It has hugely improved the lives of ordinary Venezuelans. And, here we have our president and the Miami mafia discussing this as a "threat." What 'threat"?
The threat is to transglobal FINANCIAL interests--that they CAN'T exploit Venezuelans like they do us, that they CAN'T steal their oil, like they did to Iraqis, that they CAN'T loot Venezuelan banks, and so on, and they have gained the power to equate THEIR PRIVATE interests with "U.S. national security."
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