Reply #198: Where did he say anything about impending real war. [View All]

[pschoeb]

Your taking the musing of this AP reporter as if fact. For example the AP reporter does state "saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government." but then the AP reporter claims(but doesn't quote) he is calling for guerrilla warfare, this seems like bullshit to me. One can't fight psychological and economic warfare with militarism, and I doubt he is really proposing this. He also supposedly speaks of the "resistance war" but this is to US imperial interests, one thing I'm sure of, is that he is concerned with keeping the Venezuelan military uncorrupted, as this has been an ongoing problem with moneyed interests buying out the military, just look at the last 170 years of Venezuelan history. He clearly states in this same article, that the US government, would prefer to subvert Venezuela without using any military means.

I'm quite sure the US government is doing everything it can to subvert the Venezuelan military, in the hopes of another coup attempt, if people think otherwise I think they are extremely naive. Why do you think we have non-stop stories on Chavez, but rarely anything on other Latin American countries. Chile has been dramatically increasing it's military spending since 2002, And Venezuela's crazy neighbor, Columbia has a very large military budget, plus money from the US for military spending, it would be foolish for Venezuela not to make some upgrades in their military, and definitely would be wise not to depend on US military supplies. Also, Chavez is increasing military pay at the lower ranks.

I don't see any overt "militarism", I see someone addressing an institution(the Venezuelan military) with a long history of being subverted by money and US interests, and trying to remind them of the principles of Simon Bolivar, in keeping colonial interests out of Venezuela.

I don't remember anywhere saying Chavez was a Saint or perfect or even good. I'm fairly interested in Latin American politics, so the reason I get on this post, strangely it seems DU rarely has any LBN on any other Latin American countries except Venezuela. Though I have to admit, I certainly find Chavez less militaristic than any NATO member country, which has pretty high minimum military standards, usually a absolute minimum of 2% gdp spending on military is required for aspiring countries with no advanced military and more is appreciated, Venezuela is at 1.2% which is actually lower than any year except for one in the last 15 years of Venezuelan spending.