Thinking About Our Country's Commitment to Venezuela
Christian Dame
Reflections by a Vietnam War Marine Officer on Current Plans to Control Venezuela.
As one who served voluntarily in Vietnam, despite personal opposition to that unpopular war, and, as a history major with an informed sense of American military affairs, I am, among many others I’m sure, dismayed by current events.
In my view, American men and women will once again be sent by our President to defend corporate interests at the expense of many others: our citizens and the common folk of Venezuela - with no debate or approval by our elected representatives. Emergency threats to our vital national interests as a pretext for this war are laughable.
Among the victims will be everyday American families who will see their sons and daughters wounded and die, and what, based on my knowledge of historical American interventions, from the Philippines in 1899 to many more recent interventions in Iraq and, historically, Central America, will be a year’s long, naive and inevitably failing bid to achieve positive "regime change”, as well as any measurable increase in national security to the US.
I look forward to the courts comparing “drug king Maduro” and his wife to the pardoned and convicted in US courts President Hernandez.
The idea that Venezuelans will welcome American soldiers to control their country and its most important resource - oil, without persistent and ultimately violent resistance, has been disproven time and again. The results will be costly and tragic for all concerned.
The fear among other Latin American countries of future US military intervention is both inevitable and long lasting.
In the 1970’s, after coming home to shame and abuse for my participation in the Vietnam civil war, I thought that our country had learned a lesson about limiting Presidential power to unilaterally declare war, and with it damage US cultural and even economic interests worldwide. I hoped veterans like me would be relieved of bearing the burden of defeats in foreign wars which neither we, nor our elected officials, had chosen.
Subsequently, as the ED of the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans in Boston, I hoped that our government would take steps to limit the damage to veterans from foreign wars.
Once more it seems I have been proven wrong.
Christian W. Dame
Former ED, NE Shelter for Homeless Veterans (now NE Shelter and Home for Veterans)
9th Engineer Btn
1st Mar Div.
Vietnam, 1969-1970
Christian W. Dame
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