Military and economic power backed by technological supremacy are the three macro components which allow the US to coerce the nations of the world ... this coercive superiority lets the US treat the whole planet as a huge theater of military operations and thus establish Strategic Commands in all global territories.
For example, US Southern Strategic Command exists to control Latin America and the Caribbean and, as a consequence, acts freely in the region to neutralize any factors that oppose it.
- Coercion against any opposing elements manifests itself in every walk of life ... in Venezuela, military coercion has already reared its head.
Plan Colombia and its twin Patriot Plan ... both designed at repeating interventionist objectives ... are military instruments conceived to respond to minority interests in the capitalist structure, aimed at subjecting the revolutionary forces struggling against a unilateral world.
Plan Colombia ... launched on the excuse of combating drug running ... has been openly converted into an anti-terrorist plan in 2004 providing a pretext for justifying a US military presence in the Andean region and to act accordingly in order to liquidate the Venezuelan revolutionary process.
Venezuela, both due to its oil reserves and its revolutionary government, will not be excluded from any military plan derived from the conceptual doctrine of unilateral hegemony.
The power brokers in the extreme right-wing Bush government believe that Venezuela is an atypical case on the “control map” kept by the US military. Energy resources and the Venezuelan process (Bolivarian Revolution), meaning a complete transformation of the social and political model, have altered the military hypothesis for “stabilility” in the region, at least in the unilateral view of the Empire.
From a national standpoint, the political system now in force in Venezuela is based on a peaceful revolution founded after Simon Bolivar ... but for the power brokers of the Empire, this model is waking the Latin American collective consciousness to seek continental emancipation, as well as stimulating regional coalitions which will affect vital US interests.
For this reason, the hawks in the US administration are applying their coercive plans to eradicate the government of Hugo Chavez. This is the role of Plan Colombia. The recent declarations by the new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, those of General James Hill seconded by his successor in the US Southern Strategic Command, General Bantz J. Craddock, and those of US Senator Bill Nelson -- all of whom are the most reactionary spokesmen of the US State Department - are on the same wavelength as the true purpose of Plan Colombia: “crush radical populists such as those in Venezuela.”
- On the other hand ... the use of paramilitaries and paid assassins by the CIA is proof of the indirect intervention of US Strategic Southern Command implemented in Venezuela.
The Granda affair constitutes the beginning of this indirect intervention ... covert military forces and the diplomacy of terror are now the coercive weapons being used by the US State Department to end Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution.
However, the revolutionary process led by Hugo Chavez ... now in the next phase of the Great Leap Forward ... is in the blood of the Venezuelan people. The January 23 march is evidence of the popular will to reject - even at the cost of one’s own life -- the imperialist pretensions to place its jackboot on Venezuelan soil.
Hugo Chavez, as leader, is loved by a people vibrant with emotion for Simon Bolivar. Hugo Chavez is the essence of this sentiment and is therefore the leader who is harvesting the seeds sown by The Libertador.
- This is why the Empire will crash and burn when confronted with a people consciously and courageously fighting with an indestructible will to follow the man who revived the emancipatory spirit of Bolivar and the revolutionary mettle to continue the struggle.
Let us celebrate the existence of Hugo Chavez, who we must follow and fully support, and transmit to him our positive energy so that his mind always remains lucid and his spirit filled with the love of a people -- who will love him for all eternity.
Colonel William E. Izarra is a retired Venezuelan Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. He may be reached at: izarraw@cantv.net