\u201cMaybe we need to look at how we more effectively target the sanctions that we have so that regime enablers finally feel the pain of those sanctions,\u201d Blinken added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, a report [PDF<\/a>] from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated January 22, 2021, indicates the sanctions by both the Obama and Trump administrations were targeted pretty well and imposed to inflict \u201cpain\u201d against 113 Venezuelans and 13 entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026President Maduro, his wife, Cecilia Flores, and son, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro Guerra; Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez; Diosdado Cabello (Socialist party president); eight supreme court judges; the leaders of Venezuela\u2019s army, national guard, and national police; governors; the director of the central bank; and the foreign minister\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Trump imposed sanctions to prohibit Venezuela from participating in U.S. financial markets and block the government\u2019s ability to issue digital currency. Treasury Department officials prohibited corporations from purchasing Venezuelan debt. Venezuela\u2019s state oil company, PdVSA, was aggressively targeted for seeking to evade U.S. sanctions and Venezuela\u2019s central bank was sanctioned too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obama flouted<\/a> the War Powers Act and launched a war in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s regime without the approval of Congress. It created a power vacuum filled by extremist militia groups and transformed the country into a failed state. Migrants are captured and sold in what the United Nations has referred<\/a> to as \u201copen slave markets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the catastrophe sparked by war, Blinken defended his support for a regime change war. \u201cI think it\u2019s been written about. I \u2014 I was the president-elect\u2019s national security adviser at the time. And he did not agree with that course of action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden was opposed to war in Libya. \u201cMy question was, okay, tell me what happens? [Gaddafi\u2019s] gone. What happens? Doesn\u2019t the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn\u2019t it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? Tell me. Tell me what we\u2019re gonna do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than concede President Biden was right and he was wrong, Blinken signaled to Senate Republicans that he would be their hawk when Biden was too dovish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken bafflingly blamed Gaddafi, who was summarily executed, for what happened in Libya after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t fully appreciate the fact that one of the things Gaddafi had done over the years was to make sure that there was no possible rival to his power. And as a result, there was no effective bureaucracy, no effective administration in Libya with which to work when he was gone,\u201d Blinken argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sarah Lazare recalled<\/a> for In These Times<\/em> the horrors unleashed on the people of Yemen, as a result of the Obama administration\u2019s support for Saudi Arabia\u2019s war against the Houthis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe coalition bombed a center for the blind<\/a>, a funeral<\/a>, a wedding<\/a>, a factory<\/a> and countless homes and residential areas, and blockaded Yemen\u2019s ports, cutting off vital food and medical shipments \u2014 all while the Obama-Biden administration was in power,\u201d Lazare wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIndeed, the Obama White House was so complicit in war crimes in Yemen in that its own State Department internally warned key U.S. military personnel could be subject to war crimes prosecution, according to a Reuters investigation<\/a> published in October 2016. By July 2015, a United Nations official was already warning<\/a> that Yemen was on the verge of a famine, a premonition that horrifically came true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Pompeo\u2019s final actions was to sanction Houthis, which caused a disruption to aid groups delivering humanitarian assistance. Biden froze the sanctions for one month the same day the Senate confirmed Blinken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked about the intense humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Blinken drew a false equivalency between the actions of the Houthis and the Saudis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to be clear-eyed about the Houthis. They overthrew a government in Yemen. They engaged in a path of aggression through the country. They directed aggression toward Saudi Arabia,\u201d Blinken contended. \u201cThey\u2019ve committed atrocities and human rights abuses and that is a fact. What\u2019s also a fact though is that the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen to push back against<\/p>\n\n\n\n the Houthi aggression has contributed to what is, by most accounts, the worst humanitarian situation that we face anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Houthis were part of the Arab Spring uprising in Yemen against the corrupt government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. State Department officials generally backed<\/a> these rebellions against autocratic rulers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a 2017 post from Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution<\/a>, \u201cAmerican intelligence officials said that Iran<\/a> was actually trying to discourage the Houthis from seizing Sanaa and openly toppling Hadi. Iran preferred a less radical course, but the Houthi leadership was drunk with success. Moreover, Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers said<\/a> on the record in January that Washington had a productive informal intelligence relationship with the Houthis against al-Qaida. He suggested that the cooperation could continue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Obama administration, which included Blinken, did not want to jeopardize a 70-year-plus alliance with Saudi Arabia and backed the monarchy\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken expressed his support for arming Ukrainian groups a total of three times. He even reminded Republican Senator Ron Johnson he had the opportunity in 2018 to write an op-ed for the New York Times promoting what senators euphemistically describe as \u201clethal defensive assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He told Republican Senator Rob Portman, \u201cI very much support the continued provision to Ukraine of lethal defensive assistance and, and indeed, of the training program as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the extent that across a couple of administrations, we\u2019ve been able to effectively train and as well as assist in different ways the Ukrainians, that has made a material difference in their ability to withstand the aggression they\u2019ve been on the receiving end of from Russia,\u201d Blinken asserted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to gauge whether the policy has been effective or helped Ukrainians withstand battles with pro-Russian separatist groups. There is not a whole lot of reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who was the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, stated<\/a> in 2015, \u201cIf the U.S. policy changed to provide, say, Javelins, for example, that would probably lead to increased lethality on the battlefield for the Ukrainians. It would not change the situation strategically in a positive way, because the Russians would double down. They would dramatically increase more violence, more death, more destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe conflict in Ukraine\u2019s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east, called Donbass, erupted in April 2014, weeks after Russia\u2019s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula,\u201d according to the Associated Press. \u201cMore than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Stephen Cohen called<\/a> attention to the role of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine. The overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych was a \u201cviolent coup\u201d led by fascist conspirators opposed to Russia. They conducted exterminations of ethnic Russians. The Azov Battalion, part of Kiev\u2019s armed forces, is pro-Nazi and was banned from receiving U.S. military aid, but it almost certainly obtained weapons shipped by the Trump administration from the black market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are left then not with Putin\u2019s responsibility for the resurgence of fascism in a major European country but with America\u2019s shame, and possible indelible stain, on its historical reputation for tolerating it, even if only through silence,\u201d Cohen concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the United States under Trump that ditched the Iran nuclear deal, not Iran. Still, it is the Biden\u2019s administration position that Iran should first \u201ccomply\u201d with U.S. demands before the U.S. rejoins the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA [nuclear deal], we would do the same thing and then use that as a platform working with our allies and partners to build longer and stronger agreements \u2014 also capture some of the other issues that need to be dealt with, with regard to missiles, with regard to Iran\u2019s activities and destabilizing activities in the region,\u201d Blinken said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is a lot that Iran will need to do to come back into compliance. We would then have to evaluate whether it actually [did] so. So, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s anything that\u2019s happening tomorrow or the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, as CBS News described<\/a> in November, Iran has endured a \u201charrowing, sanctions-fueled coronavirus catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doctors experience shortages of every supply necessary for fighting the pandemic. \u201cU.S.-led sanctions have choked off Iran\u2019s access to foreign-made chemicals and equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran has begged<\/a> Biden to lift sanctions that prevent Iran from accessing COVID-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Melodramatically, Senator Marco Rubio feverishly asked Blinken has any doubt that the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s goal is to be the \u201cworld\u2019s predominant political, geopolitical, military, and economic power and for the United States to decline in relation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do not,\u201d Blinken replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have no doubt?\u201d Rubio chimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have no doubt,\u201d Blinken restated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Obama to Trump, U.S. empire has prepared its forces for what it calls \u201cgreat power competition\u201d between China and Russia. It fears China will take the place of the U.S., leading to one of Blinken\u2019s nightmare futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the public is wary over military interventions in the Middle East. The threat of terrorism is no longer enough to justify expenditures toward an ever-gargantuan military-industrial complex. Countering China, however, is an easier sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cForcing men, women, and children into concentration camps, trying to, in effect, reeducate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,\u201d Blinken remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human rights abuses under Biden will increasingly be weaponized to defend policies and operations that ramp up tensions with China. Whether descriptions of China\u2019s acts are accurate or not, the point will be to silence anyone who questions whether the violations are enough to warrant increased conflict. (Of course, how dare anyone raise the matter of U.S. deportation camps and their horrors or America\u2019s mass incarceration of 1\u20132 million people to point out any sort of hypocrisy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the House of Representatives voted to arm so-called rebel groups in Syria in 2014, MSNBC\u2019s Joe Scarborough asked Blinken about concerns that arms \u201ccould end up in wrong hands.\u201d Blinken brushed aside concerns and maintained the U.S. would vet and give arms to \u201cthe right people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported<\/a> \u201cCIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed [militias had] repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo\u201d in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken may not be rapture ready like his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. He may be more willing to wave the LGBTQIA+ rainbow flag when arming proxy forces or backing regime change operations. However, they are both devout believers in American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He views<\/a> Biden as a president who will put the \u201cglobe back on its axis\u201d after Trump. He will spend his time at the State Department working to \u201crestore democracy\u201d and \u201crenew\u201d America\u2019s \u201cleadership\u201d in the world. Which means Blinken will continue the many callous, cold, and calculating traditions of U.S. imperialism, promote hubris over humility, and commit himself to cloaking ignoble acts in the rhetoric of human rights.<\/p>\n The post The American Exceptionalism Of Secretary Of State Antony Blinken<\/a> appeared first on Shadowproof<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on Shadowproof<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blinken may not be rapture ready like his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. He may be more willing to wave the LGBTQIA+ rainbow flag when arming proxy forces or backing regime change operations. However, they are both devout believers in American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n The post The American Exceptionalism Of Secretary Of State Antony Blinken<\/a> appeared first on Shadowproof<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5272,1328,5261,2111,2116,5262,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20241,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20240\/revisions\/20241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Blinken Defends Being Wrong On War In Libya<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/2725\/1*jlGp3TYhuZQUJqcX3qnfKQ.png\")
The Bothsidesism Of Blinken\u2019s View Toward War In Yemen<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Very Much\u2019 Supporting U.S. Arms Shipments To Ukraine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/1440\/0*nbbf7LeqIwHrWD47.jpg\")
US Return To Iran Nuclear Deal Not Happening Soon<\/h1>\n\n\n\n