11/09/2005: Over the weekend, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela once again asserted his place as the world's leading anti-globalization protester, hurling insults at George Bush and calling for the defeat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. If all there was to the Venezuelan president was his backward socialist views, Chavez wouldn't be such a problem. He'd just be a hypocrite whose government enriches itself on highly globalized, state-controlled oil revenues, while he denies the region's privately owned businesses the same opportunity.
The trouble is, Chavez is about much more than hypocrisy. He's become an exporter of revolution, a socialist authoritarian with a Fidel Castro-style agenda to destabilize the region and with oil dollars to finance his ambitions. Consider how his government takes advantage of Venezuela's oil wealth. When an American driver fills up at the local Citgo station, those gas dollars go from American wallets into Chavez's governing pockets -- after all, his government controls Citgo. From Venezuelan coffers, the money goes to fund leftist narco-insurgencies in Colombia, Ecuador, and other Latin American countries -- insurgencies the U.S. soldiers and U.S. taxpayers have expended great resources to tamp down.
Leftist guerrillas from eight Latin American countries have received training at Venezuelan military bases this year, according to an Ecuadorian intelligence report revealed in a Quito newspaper earlier this month. El Presidente Chavez of course denies the charges. But his recent vows to create a regional, anti-American leftist front, his alliance with Fidel Castro's Cuba, his rising military expenditures and persistent reports that weapons disappear from the Venezuelan military into the hands of regional leftist rebels, make the charges all the more believable.
The Ecuadorian newspaper, El Comercio, wrote that since 2001, a 200-man leftist "liberation army" has been operating in Ecuador and that some of the men received training in Venezuela. In a follow-up story this month, the Miami Herald wrote that the intelligence report says the Venezuelans provided a month-long training course for guerrillas from Peru, Bolivia, Chile Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez, a leader who has abused his original democratic election by rolling back civil rights and press freedom in the country, is fast asserting his place as a socialist imperialist of the Soviet model. Not only is he meddling in his neighbors' backyards, he has threatened to nationalize British petroleum interests and other foreign businesses in Venezuela. In the U.S., meanwhile, he has been trying the old Castro-ite techniques of wooing the American Left in Chicago's inner city and other blighted areas, offering free Venezuelan medical services. The supposed charity often comes with aggressive rhetoric opposing the U.S. government.
Now he's supplying cheap heating oil to Taxachusetts, with help from the usual suspects:
QUINCY, Mass. -- Venezuela, a key supplier of U.S. oil imports whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration, will supply tens of thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents with discounted home heating oil under an agreement signed yesterday. The agreement will distribute oil from a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company at 40% below market prices. It gives President Hugo Chávez's government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. citizens at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so. Meanwhile, congressional efforts to expand aid in response to a spike in winter heating costs have failed.
Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who met with Mr. Chávez in August and helped to broker the deal, said his constituents' need for heating assistance trumped any political points the Chávez administration can score. "This is a humanitarian gesture," Mr. Delahunt said, speaking outside the home of a constituent who will receive heating aid.
What's the U.S. to do about Chavez, who is essentially a less-senile Castro with a bigger country and petrodollars to burn? For a start, Chavez's meddlesome ways need to be exposed, as they were a tiny bit with the Miami Herald story. It's a mystery why Washington's politicians and pundits aren't condemning Chavez more aggressively.
Close attention needs to be paid to Chavez's actions in Latin America. Instability in that neighborhood, fueled by drug-running guerrillas, can only bring a return to the deadly, difficult days of the 1980s, in which Latin American populations were worn down and impoverished by constant insurgent warfare, assassinations, and other such terror, and the Americas as a whole, including the U.S., were awash in refugees.
Venezuela is no Soviet Union, to be sure. But even pipsqueak Cuba managed to mess around with Grenada and other states. The fact that Hugo Chavez is bent on spreading leftist revolution throughout a region that is only beginning to get on its democratic feet, and that Chavez sits at the helm of an oil-rich country, is cause for alarm. It's time to call Hugo Chavez on his aggressive, unilateral, destabilizing foreign policy, and even to punish him for it.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/23/2005 13:35 ||
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#1
Yep. Ol' Suntan Billy broke out his Fidel Castro autographed Commie knee pads and sucked a couple of million gallons of cheap oil outta Hugo. And had Joe Kennedy's Citizen's Energy Corporation distribute it. It's always a great highlight up here to see Joe all dressed up like he works for a living, lugging the hose off of the truck for that first cheap oil delivery of the year. That'll do it for Joe's heavy lifting this year.
Nuthin to do with politics though. It's for the children. And if it makes Bush look bad, well hey, that's gravy. If Bill Delahunt has to look like a groveling pawn to some Commie dictator to get some cheap oil for his constituents, well then pack those kneepads cuz he's heading for Hugoland!
How were the beaches, Billy? Did you stop at Hedonism II on the way back?
#2
The stupidity of Americans who fall for this thug's antics is bottomless. Have they ever stopped to think that that whore of a Kennedy could buy them cheap heating oil for the whole winter with just given up a fraction of his fortune?
#3
I say go for it and expand it to as many as we can. It's free money and soaks up funds he could be using to subvert and overthrow his neighbors. Chavez isn't going to win himself any additional defenders to man the barricade. If the US decides it needs to take out Chavez and his buddies, all the recipients care about is if the Feds will replace the funds.
Posted by: ed ||
11/23/2005 20:41 Comments ||
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"The president misled us." "Still no WMDs." "If I had only known then what I do nowâŠ"
This is the intellectual level of Democratic wartime criticism about the Bush administration as we near the third Iraqi election â the one that will finally give faces to the first truly elected parliamentary government in the Arab world.
So what is behind this crying game at home â when we are so close to achieving our goals abroad?
Bad polls and far-worse casualties. With over 2,000 American dead in Iraq, the politicians think their own brilliant three-week war was ruined by George Bushâs 32-month failed reconstruction.
But the Democratic establishmentâs anger is even more complicated than that since it is not yet quite sure of the mood of the fickle American people.
True, from the very beginning a small group of leftists has done its best to mischaracterize the effort to remove Saddam Hussein as some sort of Halliburton, âno-blood-for oil,â âBush lied/thousands died,â âneoconâ war âfor Israel.â But despite the occasional auxiliary efforts of the elite press, until now there were really no takers in the mainstream Democratic party for the vehement antiwar crowdâs slander for at least three reasons.
One was the crazies. By that I mean that the Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Cindy Sheehan factions have a propensity to go lunatic and say or do anything â like shamefully praising the murdering terrorists who blow apart Iraqi women and children and U.S. soldiers as "Minutemen,â or calling the president of the United States âthe worldâs greatest terrorist.â
A sanctimonious Jimmy Carter may sit next to the buffoonish Michael Moore at the Democratic Convention in VIP seats, but the inclusion of his name with Rep. John Murthaâs is still apparently considered by liberals to be an outright slander. So up until now invoking Bush as a "liar" and our enemies as "heroes" was considered over the top.
Two, the Democratic left wing was wrong on the Cold War and mostly wrong on Gulf War I. With minorities in the Congress, fearful that they might never again be trusted on national security, and cognizant that both Bill Clintonâs campaign against Milosevic and George Bushâs war against the Taliban had been relatively cost-free, they outdid themselves in calling for invasion of Iraq.
Go back and read any of the statements of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, or Jay Rockefeller about the dangers of Saddam Hussein and the need to take him out. Only then can you understand why the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly, with a strong Democratic majority, to authorize a war.
So up until now, Democrats had an embarrassing paper trail that in the era of Google searches made it hard to claim that the war was Bushâs alone and not their own. Indeed, as long as casualties were considered "tolerable" and the polls stable, most Democrats continued to talk in accordance with their own past votes and wanted to bask in the success of ending the Hussein nightmare.
Three, most Democrats knew the history of the George McGovern pullout campaign of 1972 that ended in disaster for the party at large. It just isnât smart to lose American wars by cutting out â unless you have a Watergate for cover. Yet so far not outing a CIA employee who was not a covert agent does not make a scandal.
For all the media pizzazz about the peace candidate Howard Dean, the good Dr. had not a prayer of winning either the nomination or the presidency. Indeed, his tenure as chairman of the Democratic party has been a Republican godsend, since, like McGovern, he has the propensity in a single moment of heartfelt sincerity to scare the hell out of the American people.
Thus the savvy strategy as the casualties grew was to quibble, ankle-bite, and offer empty platitudes like âGet the U.N. back there,â âGet NATO in,â and âGet the Arab League on board,â rather than offering an ad hoc alternative plan of leaving Iraq in the style of Vietnam, Lebanon, or Mogadishu.
Two of those reservations have now vanished, as George Bushâs flight suit; the museum looting; Saddamâs public dental exam; the embalming of the Hussein boys; naked pictures from Abu Ghraib; a supposedly flushed Koran in Guantanamo Bay; rants on the Senate floor; the Scooter Libby indictment; comparisons of the U.S. military to Saddam Hussein; Nazi Germany; Stalin; and Pol Pot; the broadsides of Joe Wilson; Richard Clarke; General Anthony Zinni; Brent Scowcroft; Lawrence Wilkerson, et al.; lies that our soldiers targeted Western journalists; the meae culpae of prominent former war supporters from Francis Fukuyama to George Packer; white phosphorus; leaks about supposed CIA torture prisons abroad â along with mostly silence from the embattled administration and U.S. combat dead exceeding 2,000 â have changed the political calculus.
So Democrats have overcome two caveats. First, they are beginning to sound like Michael Moore while distancing themselves from Michael Moore. Second, they have come up with a clever escape ploy from their own previous rhetoric. Yes, they voted for the war, but the intelligence they had was ânot the sameâ as the presidentâs. And besides, they were merely senators who fund wars, while George Bush was the commander-in-chief who directs them. âHe started it â not usâ may be the stuff of errant boys on the playground, but it apparently offers a way out of past embarrassing speeches and votes. Even more clever, they now claim that voting âto authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraqâ in October 2002 is not quite the same as actually authorizing a war in March 2003.
Consequently, the Democrats are now inching toward jettisoning their final reservation and embracing the Howard Dean cut-and-run position. Still, shrewd pros like a Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, or Chuck Schumer are not quite there yet for two other understandable worries. The polls say Americans are tired of the war, but not yet ready to quit and give up on all that has been achieved, leaving brave Iraqi reformers to ninth-century beheaders and suicide-murderers.
Second, these more astute Democrats are not sure that the Iraqi gambit might not work, especially with the December election coming up, the public trial of Saddam, the growth of the Iraqi security forces, and the changed attitudes in Europe, Jordan, and Lebanon. Many talk a lot about Vietnam circa 1967 but deep down and in silence most have mixed emotions about Saigon 1975.
For now Democrats stammer, sputter, and go the Bush shoulda / coulda route â not quite ready to take the McGovern sharp turn, forever waiting on polls and events on the ground in Iraq, always unsure whether peace and democracy will come before the 2,500th American fatality.
Yet as they hedge â on television praising Congressmen Murtha who advocates withdrawal, but making sure they vote overwhelmingly on the record to reject his advice â they should consider some critical questions.
First, are the metrics of this war in the terroristsâ or our favor? Are the Iraqi security forces growing or shrinking? Are elections postponed or on schedule? Are Europe, Jordan, Lebanon, and others more or less sympathetic to a war against Islamic terrorism in Iraq? Are bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Zarqawi more or less popular or secure after we removed Saddam? Is al Qaeda in a strengthened or weakened position? Is the Arab world more or less receptive to democracy in the Gulf, Egypt, Lebanon, and the West Bank? And is the United States more or less vulnerable to a terrorist attack as we go into our fifth year since September 11?
I ask those questions in all sincerity since the conventional wisdom â compared to the true wisdom and compassion of those valiantly fighting the terrorists under the most impossible of conditions â is that we are losing in Iraq, our enemies are emboldened, and the Arab world has turned against us. But if we forget the banality of New York Times columnists, the admonitions of NPR experts, and the daily rants of a Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, or Al Gore, more sober and street-smart Democrats are in fact not so sure of these answers.
So these wiser ones wait and hedge their wagers. They give full rein to the usefully idiotic and irresponsible in their midst, but make no move yet to undo what thousands of brave American soldiers have accomplished in Iraq.
What exactly is that? Despite acrimony at home, the politics of two national elections and a third on the horizon, and the slander of war crimes and incompetence, those on the battlefield of Iraq have almost pulled off the unthinkable â the restructuring of the politics of the Middle East in less than three years.
And for now that is still a strong hand to bet against.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/23/2005 13:23 ||
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Okay! Let's play "Count the Lefty buzzwords and phrases!" Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited -- and condoned -- by the very men we idolize as our 'heroic' founding fathers.
One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. Always quite the Turkey Day freak show.
Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.That the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable. So perfesser? You taking the day off? You giving back your holiday pay which is evidently covered in the blood of noble indigenous peoples? Suuuuuure you are...
But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people-- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.
One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter. Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society. Yeah, and they didn't even fight back. They just laid down and died, being the noble pacifists they were. Right, perfesser?
Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. Hmmmmm...interesting. Pass the turkey...
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." George Washington: The BushHitler of the 18th Century.
Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them." Damn. I hope Barbra Streisand know this when she quotes him next time?
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway." Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth." Couldn't get away with that today, Teddy. That'd get you made into a Big Giant Puppet.
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Really? I thought that was just Bush and Chaney?
Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who "settled" the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.
But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?" This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.
This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action. Good job, perfesser! I knew you'd get it in there!
Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to "humble our proud nation" and "undermine young people's faith in our country." Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power. ...and it'll keep you tenured at UT.
History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact. Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony. History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom. As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects of the day's mythology on our minds. Mmmmmmmmmmm...bounty of empire! Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of, most recently, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005).
#7
Besides being a tremendous waste of bandwidth, horrendous claptrap like this is what will doom the left to irrelevancy. Jensen needs to be dragged through thumbtacks and dipped in rubbing alcohol. At least then he would actually have something to whine about.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
