Democratic Rep Says VP Pence Is 'Inciting Violence' in Venezuela
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to educate anyone who owns a television about what’s going on in the country of Venezuela at present. When an armored personnel carrier is running over unarmed civilian protesters, you know things have gotten out of hand.
When you see this sort of thing, you might ask who’s to blame. Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro seems a safe bet. Obviously, some responsibility must be meted out to the soldiers responsible for running over the civilians and the military commanders who remain slavishly loyal to the despotic regime.
But Vice President Mike Pence? That one probably hasn’t occurred to you, nor really anyone else. Thankfully, we have Rep. Ro Khanna to set us straight on what the haps are in the failed socialist state and why we ought to be looking toward the vice president when it comes to apportioning blame.
The California Democrat was appearing on MSNBC to discuss the collapsing situation in Venezuela when he said that Pence’s support of recognized acting president and opposition leader Juan Guaidó is somehow retrenching Maduro.
“This is why some of us in Congress have been urging restraint,” Khanna said. “We condemn Maduro’s regime. It’s been a failed regime. But we have been saying that the vice president shouldn’t be interfering and inciting violence with Guaidó.
“What we should be doing is deferring to the Pope to have a negotiated settlement, or Uruguay, or Mexico. It looks like the United States is getting inching in to yet another bloody conflict and this is not going to be easy.
“Venezuela is one of the most armed nations in the world, 1.6 million militias. The military appears divided between Guaidó and Maduro. And the question is, is this really the United States’ role to get involved in yet another war overseas?”
To start deconstructing the rubbish here, let’s start with the most visible thing Pence did to interfere and incite violence:
To @jguaido, the National Assembly and all the freedom-loving people of Venezuela who are taking to the streets today in #operacionlibertad—Estamos con ustedes! We are with you! America will stand with you until freedom & democracy are restored. Vayan con dios! #FreeVenezuela
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 30, 2019
In other words, as the country descends from the circle of hell reserved for gluttons to the one in which the corpora of Brutus, Judas and Cassius are gnawed on in perpetuity by the Prince of Darkness, Rep. Khanna is very worried that a tweet in which the vice president of the United States expresses support for the country’s recognized leader is “interfering and inciting violence with Guaidó.”
Furthermore, instead of throwing his support behind Operation Freedom — Guaidó’s push to finally end the Maduro regime’s hold on the country — Khanna is hoping that the Pope or another Central and/or South American country can negotiate a peace in Venezuela.
As for the Pope, it’s worth noting that the Vatican has refused to take any sort of real stand on the matter; the Catholic News Agency reported in February that Pope Francis “places the Holy See in the middle between two positions: that of the US and Europe, eager to recognize Juan Guaidò as interim president; and that of China, Russia, Turkey and Iran, who are on the opposite position.”
In short, the supposed ethical arbiter that the Vatican is supposed to represent has no real moral position on the matter, instead opting for a realpolitik view that splits the difference between those who want to depose a nightmare regime that has left the country in famished ruins while oppressing its own people and carrying out alleged extrajudicial killings, and those who want that regime to continue in power.
The diminishing moral returns from the Chair of Saint Peter from the days of Pope John Paul II until now are absolutely staggering.
As for other countries who might negotiate a piece — Mexico or Uruguay are mentioned by Khanna, two nations whose ruling parties lilt quite heavily to the left — this is all well and good in theory, except none of these countries have the diplomatic gravitas to withstand the entreaties (one might even say veiled threats) of Maduro-supporting nations like China or Russia.
While Rep. Khanna is “urging restraint,” rest assured the wolfish allies of the ghoulish, mustachioed brute desperately trying to hold onto power in Venezuela won’t be restrained in any sense of the word. It would behoove us to remember this.
But then, all of this is superfluous, anyway. Vice President Pence — along with the Trump administration — have made it clear their policy is to support Juan Guaidó as the rightful leader of Venezuela.
By acting within this policy, nobody is inciting anything. Rather, the incitement comes from a brutal despot who has starved his people and now runs them over in the streets.
Supporting Operation Freedom is an attempt to put an end to this. Are Democrats unable to tell the difference?
I’d imagine they probably can — and that’s the problem. Let’s leave aside the fact that they’re willing to put cries of the browbeaten people of Venezuela on read in order to score cheap political points against the administration, although that’s profoundly immoral in and of itself.
When it’s come to the battle against totalitarianism during the past century, too much of the American left has been willing to engage in appeasement. Witness the Soviet Union, an evil empire too many Democrats and other sundry leftists were willing to apologize for. (Bernie Sanders, currently vying for the Democrat presidential nomination, honeymooned there.)
Cuba is another favorite of the left, with several Democrat congressional delegations traveling to Castro’s nightmare regime even before it was opened up. As for Venezuela, it’s not too hard to remember when it was a favorite of progressives, a sign that socialism worked.
Even now, as the country collapses, we see Democrats like Rep. Khanna still not willing to take a stand for the ordinary Venezuelans who want the basic human rights endowed to us by our creator. Instead, he says the real culprit is the vice president standing with those Venezuelans.
Please, tell us again about how your party stands with the poor, downtrodden and mistreated, Rep. Khanna.
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