Trump Has Murdered Over 40,000 Venezuelans With Sanctions
This is not a defense of Trump, but this headline lets the US off too easy.
If you make (a) sanctions about (b) an individual, that dodges the inescapable fact that (c )sanctions are an ingrained and inescapable part of US foreign policy, and (d) they are frequently levied, regardless of who the POTUS is, or what party the POTUS is from.
When Rex Tillerson was being confirmed as Secretary of State, he came under extreme scrutiny from both parties because he had, prior to the hearings, the utter audacity to suggest that sanctions were not always as perfect a means of exerting US power as the US wants everyone to believe.
Tillerson was CEO of Exxon, after all. Hard to imagine an individual who would know more about the pros and cons of international sanctions than the CEO of a Top 10 global oil company.
At any rate, during his hearings, Marco Rubio went batshit crazy, threatening to vote AGAINST Tillerson (which could have sunk his nomination) unless Tillerson recant his heresy.
So he did. But that doesn’t change reality, which is pretty simple:
- The US uses sanctions with impunity
- Sanctions are designed to depress the economy of the offending nation, many times sending that economy into recession.
- When a recession happens, (in ANY country, even a rich one) the people that suffer the most are the poorest, and wealth inequality in that nation jumps.
But………the US still thinks they’re a good idea…….
