“Bomb, invade, occupy a country to see it flourish.” Such is the logic of the absurd philosophy of imperialist interventionism that has been applied by the United States throughout the world in the name of the defense of freedom and western culture.

But war is the worst human calamity and, despite the feverish hopes and utopian promises of its promoters, humanitarian interventions almost always result in unimaginable killings, devastation, horror and suffering added to the situations that “justified” them.

The most recent United States wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria) should serve as sufficient proof of this fact: Future humanitarian warriors make serious professions of humanitarianism and end up killing many of those they promised to help.

I consider it very interesting to assess this dilemma from the point of view of the defenders of humanitarian warfare as an ideal mechanism to ensure its geopolitical and/or class advantages in circumstances such as the current ones we are analyzing here.

Let us examine what the imperialist camp is proposing about a possible U.S. military intervention in Venezuela through Doug Bandow. He is a senior researcher at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded in Washington D.C. in 1974 as the Charles-Koch Foundation, dedicated to lobbying and promoting capitalist public policies that challenge socialism based on the free principles of individual freedom, limited government and the pro-laissez-faire markets.

Bandow was President Ronald Reagan’s assistant and author of the book “America’s New Global Empire”.

Previously, the warmongering “humanitarian” interveners went straight to looting but, over time, they refined their rhetoric and began to talk about trade and investment opportunities, increases in GDP and other more subtle forms of robbery.

According to Bandow, last year, President Donald Trump asked his aides if the United States should intervene militarily in Venezuela. Everyone argued against the idea. He then asked for the opinion of several Latin American leaders who also strongly opposed it.

However, the US intervention had to be assessed from the point of view of the economic benefits that this could bring, both for the oligarchic sectors of Venezuela and for the hegemonic interests of the United States.

Cynically, it was argued that the number of people killed by an American assault on Venezuela would be reduced. Extrapolating data from the U.S. assault on Panama cites an estimate of 3,500 civilian casualties.

He didn’t consider that war is not just another political tool. It is based on death and destruction. No matter how well-intentioned, military action is often indiscriminate. The course of the conflict is unpredictable and often unexpected.

Bandow admits that the pinkish predictions about the results of a U.S. expeditionary force landing in Venezuela are highly questionable. Such intervention could result in a mixture of civil war and insurgency in which the “good guys” would undoubtedly win, but the costs would be severe.

The Cato Institute researcher acknowledges that it is grotesque to try to justify military action on the grounds that fewer people could die if it didn’t happen.  Should lives be treated as abstract numbers in an account balance? Whatever the number of victims, a war would mean that thousands of people that would otherwise be alive would die. Who authorized US politicians to make that decision? Who anointed Washington to play God with the future of other peoples?

If the security and humanitarian arguments are insufficient, the economic justification is laughable: How much economic benefit for life, American or Venezuelan, justifies war? Imagine a president writing to the families of the dead soldiers explaining that his sacrifice was justified because it helped to increase Venezuela’s annual GDP rate.

And then the height of cynicism: “The most important thing would be the impact on the United States. The main responsibility of the U.S. government is to protect its own people, and its uniformed officers, who should not be treated as pawns on tactics in some global chess game. Their lives should only be in danger when their own nation has something substantial at stake.”

Finally, it is striking that these assessments emanate from the ranks opposed to Chavism, and it is certainly the case that attempting a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be the worst, and perhaps the last, madness of U.S. imperialism!

August 29, 2018.

- Manuel E. Yepe http://englishmanuelyepe.wordpress.com/

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.

This article may be reproduced by citing POR ESTO as the source.