Maduro's "Paranoia" About U.S. Regime-Change in Venezuela

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Mar. 12, 2015

Good for the Venezuelan domestic opponents of President Nicolas Maduro. Although fiercely opposed to Maduro, they have come out publicly against President Obama's meddling in Venezuela's internal affairs. According to the Washington Post,

Opposition leaders, who generally are close with the United States, said they rejected the use of unilateral sanctions. "We appreciate and are grateful for the support of the international community, but we neither want nor accept that any of its members take on roles that are ours to assume," read their statement.

"Just as we reject Cuba's offensive meddling, we cannot support nor accept any other nation's," the statement continued. "This is a struggle among Venezuelans for Venezuela."

That's what I call a principled position, unlike the pure, good, old-fashioned hypocrisy that characterizes both U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press.

Consider, for example, the mainstream press's mocking of Maduro for being paranoid about the possibility of a U.S. regime-change operation, one in which Maduro would be violently ousted from power and replaced with a pro-U.S. dictator.

Now, I'm certainly no expert on what constitutes paranoia in a clinical sense but even if Maduro is a paranoiac, that doesn't necessarily mean that his concerns about U.S. interventionism are irrational. After all, U.S. officials don't limit their extensive surveillance schemes and their regime-change operations to non-paranoid people. Recall their secret surveillance of Ernest Hemingway.

In fact, Maduro has every reason to be concerned about a U.S. regime-change operation. After all, how can anyone forget Chile?

Chile was where the U.S. Empire embarked on a regime-change operation in which the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, was ousted from power and replaced by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, a military tyrant who proceeded to round up, kidnap, rape, torture, disappear, or execute tens of thousands of innocent people.

How could Maduro ignore the parallels with Chile? Like Allende, Maduro is a socialist. Like Allende, he was elected president. Like Allende, he has established close ties with Cuba. Like Allende, his socialist economic policies are producing economic chaos within the country.

While Allende's economic policies were causing economic chaos, the fact is that it was the U.S. national-security state that was pouring fuel on the fire. "Make the economy scream," President Nixon ordered the CIA, which it then proceeded to do.

How can Maduro ignore the possibility that the U.S. national-security state is doing the same thing in Venezuela that it did in Chile? Does anyone really believe that the CIA has found religion–that it's no longer in the regime-change business?

Are we supposed to believe U.S. denials of interventionism, given that U.S. officials always deny, as a matter of policy, that they are involved in covert regime-change operations?

Don't forget, after all, that CIA Director Richard Helms was convicted of a federal criminal offense for falsely denying to Congress that the CIA was meddling in Chile with the aim of initiating a coup. Let's also not forget that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also lied to Congress regarding the extensive secret surveillance scheme that the NSA has imposed on the American people.

It was just a couple of years ago that a scheme by the U.S. Empire to undermine the Castro regime in Cuba was uncovered. Called ZunZuneo, it involved the U.S. government's use of young Latin Americans -- including some Venezuelan youth! -- to foment dissent against Castro in the hope of finally securing regime change in that country.

Oh, I almost forgot: Wasn't it the U.S. government that was gleefully celebrating the 2002 military coup in which Chavez was briefly ousted from power, until the military surrendered and released him to continue serving his term in office? Is Maduro supposed to just forget that?

Of course, we do have to ask an important question: Is it possible that President Obama and his national-security establishment really are concerned about Maduro's human-rights abuses?

Nope. That's not possible at all.

That's where some of the hypocrisy comes in. Look at Egypt, which is ruled by one of the most brutal and tyrannical dictatorships in history. Kidnappings, torture, shooting of protestors, censorship, extra-judicial executions, kangaroo trials, and all the rest.

Yet, the U.S. national-security state continues to flood the Egyptian military goons with millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money and armaments. Indeed, it has been decades of U.S. financial and military support that has reinforced Egypt's brutal and tyrannical military dictatorship. You certainly don’t see Obama, the Pentagon, and the CIA decreeing that what Egypt's goons are doing over there constitutes a threat "national security" over here.

So, what's the difference? Why angry animosity toward Venezuela and a loving partnership with Egypt? The difference is that Maduro doesn't kowtow to the U.S. Empire, just as his predecessor Hugo Chavez didn't. Venezuelan officials don't bend the knee and kiss Obama's ring, as Egyptian officials do. That's what makes Maduro a potential target for regime change.

Finally, while we're on the subject of paranoia, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that it's the NSA that has the massive surveillance scheme on the American people. The justification? That the terrorists (like al-Qaeda and ISIS) are coming to get us any day. Yeah, those millions of terrorists are going to load up millions of terrorist troops in hundreds of thousands of transport ships and start heading across the Atlantic and fly their tens of thousands of fighter jets and bombers to America. They're going to invade and conquer the United States and take over the IRS, the public schools, and the Interstate Highway System. And so to keep us safe from a terrorist conquest, the government has to monitor the emails, telephone calls, and other private communications of the American people.

Which raises an interesting question: Who are the real paranoiacs -- Nicolas Maduro and his national-security team or Barack Obama and his national-security team?
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.