VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: We may be sure that experienced military men like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias, General Baduel and their colleagues study the Iraq War carefully for clues to better the protection and defense of the Bolivarian Republic.

No one should be surprised at this; no one offended.

The leadership of any country must survey the world around them for possible threats to the sovereignty of their nations and the self-governance of their people. That is the first duty of a national government: In a word, the defense of the nation.

Clear it is, and beyond any doubt, that the only possible threats to the Fifth Republic come from the evil empire of North America.

This mighty militaristic power, as over-armed and bellicose as ever was Nazi Germany in its day, makes through its most senior officials threat after threat against your leaders and your government. In its arrogance and criminal pride it hesitates for not one single moment to do this; and then to combine threat with deed. ALL of its politicians, whether in government or in opposition assume the perquisite of dictating to all nations, especially when they produce oil or other valuable commodities, what they may or may not do; at home or abroad.

Republicans and Democrats unite to provide funding to SUMATE via official US governmental institutions. Their diplomats seek information and stir up subversion within the ranks of the Venezuelan forces. And they are guilty already in one failed and bloody attempt against your nation. Through their stooges and puppets they have killed Venezuelans in the streets of their own capital.

The US press is as carefully and completely controlled as any in the world. But occasionally real information leaks through. And in recent days mention has been made of official US concerns at the shift of Venezuelan military officials toward study and implementation of plans for "asymmetric warfare."

This being militar-ese for guerilla war.

Iraq has shown, due to the spirited resistance of many of its people to US occupation, the limits to the military power of the USA. Despite over three years of outright occupation, and many years before that, of blockade and intermittent military attacks, the North American Empire have been unable to consolidate their control over even oil production and shipment, let alone the population of the conquered nation.

The former government there, that of Saddam Hussein, did many things wrong in their plans for military defense. Chiefly, they allowed their standing army to attempt a set-piece, conventional defense of the capital, Baghdad, and the population centers of Mesopotamia.

This cost the lives of thousands of brave young Iraqis. The concentrations of defenders were irresistible only in being targets for US armor and air assault. While the hopelessly outgunned Iraqis vainly attempted counter-attacking the imperial invaders, they were picked off at long range by the superior weapons of their assailants.

In their stupid and criminal arrogance the US authorities proclaimed victory, when all they had won was a nation whose people were permanently hostile to invaders. And what Saddam's regime had done correctly was to give their people a high level of access to explosives and small arms. And for this reason above all others, and despite all the consequent atrocities of the US troops; the torture, the mass-imprisonments, the burning of whole towns, bombardment of the civil population, and all the rest of it, Iraq is a running sore on the body of the imperium. Even carefully orchestrated attempts to induce in the captured nation a religious civil war have not fully succeeded.

Evermore desperate expedients are considered in Washington to extricate the USA from this bloody and expensive debacle. An invasion of Iran, and the wrenching from that nation of its oil-rich Khuzestan Province being the latest wacky scenario.

The US elite would expect this event, the pretext for which would be an attempt to bar the acquisition by Iran of weapons of mass destruction, to result in more general war in the middle east. This would accomplish for them many objectives, the chief of which remains the considered and determined attempt to control the world through control of oil.

Open warfare would allow for even more radical forms of military action: Even the use of nuclear bombs has not been ruled out. Israel could become openly co-belligerent, if not allied. But most usefully of all, US society and its economy could be fully militarized. Goods and services commandeered, not bought by the military.

• Dissidents such as yours truly interned and silenced. In order to wage even the presently rather limited war the need for a military draft has been made clear and this goal could be accomplished.

In my view another incident in the USA of mass terror, such as the 9/11 atrocity could be useful to these plots, but is not necessary. Sufficient would be if in the wake of air or naval assault on Iran, the Shia of Iraq could be induced to join fully with the Sunni rebels presently in the field against the occupiers.

Our national propaganda would make the most of the plight of our poor beleaguered troops who would need rescue by dozens of new divisions to be provided by an aroused America.

That such speculations must be seriously considered is the measure of the corruption and irrationality which grips the imperial government at all levels.

Students of government and military policy will be occupied for generations to come by examination of Osama bin Laden's strategy of prodding his imperial opponents into the wrecking of their own economy and polity.

And all of this by a mere raid ... a painful and nasty one, but in modern terms no worse than those of the Red Indians against the early colonialists.

All these subjects offer intriguing vistas for the study of tacticians and strategists ... and we are sure they are not being ignored.

Chris Herz
chris@vheadline.com

http://www.vheadline.com/herz