40,000 dead Venezuelans no big deal to Cruz, Rubio and Menendez

In one respect crippling US economic sanctions can be worse than dropping bombs on countries whose regime we're trying to change. Take Venezuela for example. We’ve been hopeful and supportive of regime change there since 2002, first against hated socialist Hugo Chavez; then against his hated socialist successor Nicholas Maduro. But overt US support to control the government, indeed the oil of Venezuela, became overt in 2014 with the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Liberty Act. Sure sounds nice but it’s simply imposing punishing economic sanctions designed to inflict so much human suffering the people will be inspired to overthrow the target of regime change. A state department memo in 1960 stated this policy explicitly with regards to Cuba. In sixty years it hasn’t worked there and five years on it still hasn’t worked in Venezuela. But it has kept the 40,000 deaths largely attributed to the sanctions due to lack of food and medicine under the radar of public scrutiny.

 That would not be possible if all those dead were courtesy of US bombs; hence the lethal mendacity of sanctions.

With the current two-year sanction law set to expire, US senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez introduced a reauthorization of the nice sounding law that simply perpetuates the march of dead people in Venezuela. The 1920’s Yankees may have had their Murderers Row of Ruth, Gehrig and Lazzeri, but for real destruction they can’t top Uncle Sam’s Murderers Row of Cruz, Rubio and Menendez.