The beast behind the mask

Martin Sieff

The United States of America is exposing its real face more and more. Thus, it is absolutely foolish to think that the US is in pursuit of democracy, human rights and other values which have never been observed even in the so-called American values, American Dream and so on.

Martin Sieff, who has specialized in US and global economic issues, has dealt with the subject inan article titled, " The beast behind the mask: The US fanatical passion to destroy Venezuela".

The refusal of the US political establishment to abandon its petulant dream of toppling the democratically-elected government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela confirms that a thermonuclear superpower's strategic direction has fallen into the hands of a group of spoiled, immature, bullying young children or teenage thugs. F.N. Dostoyevsky would not have been surprised.

The mask has fallen off any remaining pretense of concern about the Venezuelan people and only the resort to naked brute force, incompetently applied is left.

The pace indeed has now become manic. US National Security Adviser John Bolton, who surely ought to have better things to do, flies half way round the world to threaten the government of India to scrap aid and trade deals with Caracas.

Yet more sanctions are announced on Venezuela’s oil trade with Cuba. Vice President Mike Pence flies to New York to twist the arms of senior figures at the United Nations to toe Washington’s hard line against Maduro.

Yet President Maduro has never committed any activities remotely amounting to genocide or crimes against humanity, unlike the US Reagan administration of which Bolton and current Special Envoy to Restore Democracy in Venezuela Eliot Abrams so consistently did to the ravaged Mayan peoples in Central America 36 years ago.

Maduro has not unleashed any wars or bombing campaigns that have killed millions of innocent civilians. He has not invaded neighboring states or used poison gas against them, as Iraq’s Saddam did with the full support of the United States when he invaded Iran in 1980.

Was Venezuela under Maduro feverishly trying to build its own Weapons of Mass Destruction? So far not even Bolton or Abrams has had the gall to suggest that.

Has the Caracas government been plotting to spread international terrorism around the world? No. Have they offered safety and sanctuary to the remnants of Daesh, now driven out of Syria by the combined military efforts of Syria, Iran, Russia and a few Muslim countries? Again: No.

Yet so desperate are America’s neo-liberals, as well as neo-conservatives to topple democratically twice –elected President Maduro that they are pulling off their bright smiling wholesome masks that are the public face of globalization to reveal the snarling, cowardly, crazed little creeps behind them.

We saw this phenomenon last week when Fareed Zakaria, the Golden Pin-Up Boy of global liberalism, used his two supposedly most influential platforms – his talk show on CNN and op-ed page access in The Washington Post to call for the immediate toppling of Maduro and then for a full superpower confrontation with Russia as well.

Now recall, Zakaria is supposed to be a “nice” guy. He is supposed to stand for the “civilized” peaceful and democratic resolution of all international disputes that has already Made War Obsolete (MWO). He is supposed to be the living embodiment of a global free trade liberalism that is unfailingly peaceful, tolerant, respectful, generous, kind and good.

Yet here Zakaria is – openly calling for the abandonment of all international law, openly calling for the violent invasion of an independent, sovereign and even democratic nation.

In other words, he is openly perpetrating exactly the kinds of wicked conduct that the 1946 Nuremburg Tribunals documented, identified and convicted the most prominent Nazi war criminals for - including most emphatically conspiracy to wage aggressive war.

One has to ask the crucial obvious questions: What is it with Zakaria and those like him? Do they really want a nuclear world war to exterminate the human race? Are they really that reckless? Are they really that stupid? Are they really that mad?

The answer to all three of those questions is obviously and indisputably: Yes.

We must, therefore continue our inquiry and ask: Why? How did Zakaria and his fellow purveyors of moral outrage get to be this way?

For the answer to this – and so much else – we must go back 150 years to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s most terrifying and haunting novel, “The Possessed”.

Dostoyevsky had a vision of the achieved, perfect (in its own eyes) liberal society, determined to sneer at and tear down all the old established constraints and supposedly absurd traditions of religion, custom and caution.

Yet this enlightened and happy breed of rational “New” Men and Women were blind to the rising generation of sociopaths and psychopaths – their own children - who now flourished in the freedom provided for them: A race so arrogant and driven that they would not rest until they had torn down all of civilization in a frenzy of destruction.

In its past, Russia has known far too many such creatures.

They teem in Washington today.