Finian Cunningham
U.S. media are incapable of any truthful journalistic service. They are part of the problem.
Eighty years after the Nuremberg Trials prosecuted Nazi leaders for criminal aggression against nations, the Trump administration is blatantly doing the same against Venezuela. Yet there is not a word of condemnation in the U.S. media or among European allies.
In the past two months, more than 80 people have been killed by U.S. air strikes on over 20 civilian boats in the waters off the Latin American country. The Trump administration has provided no evidence to back up claims that these killings were carried out against alleged drug traffickers. They are extrajudicial executions, or murder.
This week, Trump has designated the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the head of a foreign terrorist organization, an alleged narcotics cartel that is supposedly flooding the U.S. with drugs. Again, no evidence is provided. Venezuela dismissed the allegations as a ridiculous lie whose ulterior motive is the illegal use of U.S. military force for regime change in Caracas.
The pretext of combating the illicit drug trade should be seen as transparent. The largest deployment of U.S. military force in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is in itself a demonstration that the real agenda is not about interdicting drugs.
Venezuela's role in narcotics trafficking to the United States is not significant compared with other Latin American countries, according to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime. Colombia and Peru are more important as cocaine sources. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has denoted Mexico as the biggest source of illicit fentanyl, which is responsible for most American overdose deaths.
The bigger picture is, of course, the objective to get rid of a socialist government in Venezuela and for the U.S. to gain control of the country's vast oil reserves, the largest known reserves on the planet. Allied to that major reason is the desire in Washington to stymie China's legitimate growing strategic partnerships across Latin America. As Donald Ramotar, the former president of Guyana, and other observers pointed out in a recent roundtable discussion sponsored by the Schiller Institute, the United States is flexing its muscles in its presumed "backyard" to try to restore its failing global power.
This should be obvious, as it is criminal. The United Nations Charter explicitly outlaws every aspect of Trump's conduct towards Venezuela. Article 2:3 mandates that all disputes must be settled through peaceful means. Article 2:4 prohibits the use or threat of military force.
In other words, the Trump administration is clearly engaging in criminal aggression, the very conduct that the UN Charter was established in 1945 to banish after the horrific experience of Nazi crimes against peace that resulted in World War II.
This is where the U.S. news media are playing a particularly odious and time-dishonored role. The reporting by the mainstream media since Trump embarked on his aggression towards Venezuela has been an abysmal dereliction of duty to inform the public and hold government abuse of power to account.
With few exceptions, all the established news outlets in the U.S., including the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, Axios, ABC, Newsweek, among others, have indulged the Trump administration's claims and smears about Venezuela as a hub of "narco-terrorism".
The U.S. media have promoted the calls made by Venezuela opposition figures, like the dubious Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, for U.S. intervention in Venezuela for regime change, even though such a violation of a nation's sovereignty is illegal under international law.
If the American news media had any integrity and genuine independence for critical reporting, it would be holding the Trump administration to account for its criminal foreign policy. Why aren't the media pouncing on the flagrant lies and absurdities, and condemning the outrageous acts of murder and aggression?
The U.S. media are performing their historic role of acting as a propaganda service to justify or obscure criminal aggression by Washington towards its Latin American neighbors. Not just Latin America but scores of other countries around the world have endured illegal invasions and subversions for regime change.
Since the end of WWII and the establishment of the UN Charter, the United States has systematically violated the Charter's principles under the guise of numerous pretexts: from defending democracy against communism to protecting human rights, from eliminating weapons of mass destruction to promoting nation-building, and so on. The latest pretext is protecting Americans from "narco-terrorism".
The truth is that the United States is a rogue state that has trashed and violated international law for the selfish hegemonic interests of its ruling class. This has been going on for 80 years to the point where international law and U.S. pretensions of democracy are in shambolic disrepute.
This truth is what the servile U.S. media has systematically covered up for the past eight decades by credulously propagating the pretexts for criminality. No matter how many nations have been destroyed by Washington's regime-change interventions and wars, no matter how many millions have been killed and displaced, the American media dutifully cover up for the criminal aggression.
The complacency of the established U.S. media makes them complicit in the crimes of empire. This complicity is why the U.S. acts with impunity and relentless aggression against other nations.
If the U.S. media can't call it out with such a brazen example as Venezuela, the conclusion is that such media are incapable of any truthful journalistic service. They are part of the problem.
Finian Cunningham is the co-author of a forthcoming book, Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism's Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation.