{"id":43576,"date":"2019-02-06T16:28:24","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T21:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43576"},"modified":"2019-02-06T16:28:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T21:28:26","slug":"venezuela-the-uss-68th-regime-change-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43576","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela: The US\u2019s 68th Regime Change Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/mbenjamin\/2019\/02\/05\/venezuela-the-uss-68th-regime-change-disaster\/\">Venezuela: The US\u2019s 68th Regime Change Disaster<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his masterpiece,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/williamblum.org\/books\/killing-hope\"><em>Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II<\/em><\/a>, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 US regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994). Noam Chomsky\u2019s blurb on the back of the latest edition says simply, \u201cFar and away the best book on the topic.\u201d We agree. If you have not read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better understanding of the world you are living in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the US has conducted at least 13 more regime change operations, several of which are still active: Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; Iraq; the 3rd US invasion of Haiti since WWII; Somalia; Honduras; Libya; Syria; Ukraine; Yemen; Iran; Nicaragua; and now Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">William Blum noted that the US generally prefers what its planners call \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d over full-scale wars. Only in periods of supreme overconfidence has it launched its most devastating and disastrous wars, from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. After its war of mass destruction in Iraq, the US reverted to \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d under Obama\u2019s doctrine of covert and proxy war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obama conducted even&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/01\/18\/obamas-bombing-legacy\/\">heavier bombing than Bush II<\/a>, and deployed&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175945\/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_a_shadow_war_in_150_countries\/\">US special operations forces<\/a>&nbsp;to 150 countries all over the world, but he made sure that nearly all the bleeding and dying was done by Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Yemenis and others, not by Americans. What US planners mean by \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d is that it is less intense for Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Ghani of Afghanistan recently revealed that a staggering 45,000 Afghan security forces have been killed since he took office in 2014, compared with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-47005558\">only 72 US and NATO troops<\/a>. \u201cIt shows who has been doing the fighting,\u201d Ghani caustically remarked. This disparity is common to every current US war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Venezuela: The US\u2019s 68th Regime Change Disaster In his masterpiece,&nbsp;Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 US regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994). Noam Chomsky\u2019s blurb on the back of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5001,24185,1343,827,851],"class_list":["post-43576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-anti-war","tag-medea-benjamin","tag-regime-change","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43577,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576\/revisions\/43577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}