1. It’s against international law for a country to seek regime change in another county. Recognizing the VZ opposition and supporting this coup attempt is illegal.
2. We must reject the coup in VZ and support dialogue being called for by the UN, Mexico, Uruguay, and the Vatican. If the VZ people want to have another election I would fully support that. But that’s up to the VZ people and not the Trump Administration.
3. We must take unauthorized military force completely off the table. It is illegal under Article 1 Section 8 of our constitution for anyone but Congress to declare war. Bolton, Trump, and Pompeo seem to forget that. Let’s remind them. Call your Sens and Reps and ask them to cosponsor and support adoption of HR1004 and SJRes11 to prevent unauthorized war with VZ.
4. US sanctions on VZ are killing people and making a bad situation worse. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), they have already killed about 40,000 people by stopping the flow of food and medicine. Sanctions typically do nothing but hurt vulnerable people. The sanctions on Iraq under Clinton did nothing to oust Saddam. They did kill hundreds of thousands of children. Let’s not let VZ become another Iraq.
5. Juan Guiado and his opposition party only make up about 14 members of the national assembly. He planned this coup attempt pretty much in secret with only 4 people close to him. Many folks in VZ that don’t like Maduro also reject Guiado, foreign interference, and the sanctions. Guiado’s coup attempt failed miserably yesterday and proves that the majority of VZ people don’t want this. Without the US backing, Guiado is powerless. Juan Guiado was not elected president so let’s stop pretending supporting him = supporting democracy. Supporting him = violating international law and supporting more violence inside VZ.
Hassan El-Tayyab, co-director at Just Foreign Policy