By Manifesto Joe
Here's yet another signpost of the worst U.S. presidency in 150 years. According to a forthcoming book by leading Chilean diplomat Heraldo Munoz, the Bush administration threatened trade sanctions -- among other things -- against allied governments that, during the run-up, declined to support a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The threats of reprisals, the spying, and all the other little nasties, Munoz wrote in a book due out next month, have cost the U.S. very dearly in credibility, good will, and leadership standing among our allies since war drums started beating back in 2002.
The Washington Post report was, in part, as follows:
UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Munoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.
"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Munoz writes.
But this schoolyard-bully act couldn't go on indefinitely. After the invasion, when the war situation just kept getting worse, Bush had to wag his tail like a sniveling cur
and suck back up to all the "allied" governments he had pissed off in such a cavalier manner. More from WaPo:
But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Munoz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.
The U.S. was already running short of friends in Latin America, for reasons that go back over a century in our respective histories. I suppose a hardened cynic might think that those south of the border should be used to American intervention by now. Our Marines have been in Nicaragua so many times, they should perhaps rename the country "Camp LeJeune South."
Anyway, in a time when leftist, anti-American (well, at least anti-Bush) governments are ascendant in the region, the high jinks over Iraq couldn't have helped matters.
You can read the entire WaPo story here.
This administration's problem -- well, one among an infinite number -- is that they keep goosestepping through the pasture in their jackboots, expecting others to follow, and even for the others to do the wiping up after the mess is made.
Most of the world could see the utter foolishness of the Iraq invasion before the fact. Bush, buoyed by pathological liar VP Dick Cheney and groveling high-class prostitute Colin Powell, led the U.S. and some of the rest of the world into this, sound advice be damned.
This is just one more chapter in the travesty. But I hope Munoz's account will circulate and somehow hasten an end to the grotesque chapter in world history that the Iraq war has been.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Showing posts with label Latin America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latin America. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Bush Misadventures In Mideast Blinded Him To Troubles In Latin America
By Manifesto Joe
While the U.S. remains stuck in the Iraq quagmire, and Afghanistan looks increasingly like one, too, there's plenty of trouble simmering in our own back yard. The problems of Latin America have already changed the face of America forever -- and that may be just a warm-up, because now there's the faint odor of war.
Reuters reported Sunday from Caracas:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent troops and tanks to the Colombian border and mobilized warplanes on Sunday, warning Bogota could spark a war after it bombed inside another of its neighbors, Ecuador.
Reacting to Colombia's killing on Saturday of a Colombian rebel over the border in Ecuador, a Venezuelan ally, Chavez also withdrew all of his diplomats from Bogota in the worst dispute between the neighbors since he came to office in 1999. ...
"May God spare us a war. But we are not going to allow them violate our sovereign territory," the ex-paratrooper said.
Colombia's troops killed Raul Reyes, a leader of Marxist FARC rebels, during an attack on a jungle camp in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency. The operation included air strikes and fighting across the border.
The anti-U.S. Chavez, who had warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be "cause for war," threatened to send Russian-made fighter jets into U.S. ally Colombia if its troops also struck inside his OPEC country.
Eduador's president, Rafael Correa, also sent troops to the Colombian border and expelled Colombia's ambassador.
Some analysts viewed the moves as grandstanding by Chavez, who must realize that war with Colombia would bring serious repercussions to Venezuela's economy. But if war were to break out, the U.S., being allied with Colombia and having demonized Chavez for many years, would be in a real spot.
The official U.S. response sounded pretty lame. Reuters went on:
Washington, which backs Uribe's fight against the rebels with its largest military aid outside the Middle East, said it was monitoring developments after Chavez's "odd reaction."
At this point, the only real way George W. Bush can exert influence in Latin America is militarily, and his Iraq misadventure has made that option precarious to say the least. And, given the history of hostility toward Chavez, intervention down there could well turn into yet another quagmire that the American people can't afford.
The incident suggests U.S. vulnerability, and diminished influence, as part of the pathetic Bush legacy. Obsessed with Mideast adventures, Bush has left the U.S. looking a lot like the Richard Nixon metaphor of a "pitiful, helpless giant" when it comes to dealing with events on our own hemisphere.
Pablo Bachelet of McClatchy Newspapers posted a piece, "Bush Legacy: Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?", that is definitely worth a read. Bachelet, actually posting Saturday, the day before the troop movements were reported, wrote of Bush:
... his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.
He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.
I wouldn't exactly endorse some of the free-trade pacts referred to there. But at the core of the issues are the lack of serious U.S. political engagement in Latin America, and the inability to see how some economic rivals are making inroads in the region.
And the demonization of Chavez has proved costly. I have little doubt, judging from his actions, that Chavez is a power-monger (sorry, many fellow lefties). But the current administration has done plenty to antagonize him. There are conflicting accounts, but the U.S. government appears to have been, at the very least, willing to condone any success of the April 2002 coup attempt against him, had it been successful.
A bottom line here is that, whatever warts the man has, Chavez has won election after election in Venezuela, by wide margins. There haven't been credible challenges to the legitimacy of those elections. He didn't have to be appointed to the presidency by his country's high court. His popularity among common Venezuelans is beyond question, and so is his legitimacy as the nation's leader.
Normalization of relations with Venezuela would be a big step in the right direction. Chavez, I admit, makes me pretty nervous; but the U.S. fraternizes with anti-democratic strongmen who make me a lot more nervous. To wit, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is an ally. Chavez never will be, but I would say that with him, normalization of relations is a practical and desirable option.
It won't happen under a President McCain. It might under a President Obama, or a President Clinton. There's a lot of damage to be repaired, and we can pretty much assume that no Republican administration will do it.
Another starting point would be Cuba. Bachelet also wrote:
Some critics say changing the Cuba policy also will help. A new Cuba approach, says Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be a ''superb opening toward refurbishing'' the Latin America policy that he describes as "bordering on failure.''
In microcosmic terms, the U.S. has been hassling with folks across town, while the neighbors are about to start a shooting feud that we (in the editorial sense) helped start. It's time to come back to the neighborhood and rejoin the association.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
While the U.S. remains stuck in the Iraq quagmire, and Afghanistan looks increasingly like one, too, there's plenty of trouble simmering in our own back yard. The problems of Latin America have already changed the face of America forever -- and that may be just a warm-up, because now there's the faint odor of war.
Reuters reported Sunday from Caracas:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent troops and tanks to the Colombian border and mobilized warplanes on Sunday, warning Bogota could spark a war after it bombed inside another of its neighbors, Ecuador.
Reacting to Colombia's killing on Saturday of a Colombian rebel over the border in Ecuador, a Venezuelan ally, Chavez also withdrew all of his diplomats from Bogota in the worst dispute between the neighbors since he came to office in 1999. ...
"May God spare us a war. But we are not going to allow them violate our sovereign territory," the ex-paratrooper said.
Colombia's troops killed Raul Reyes, a leader of Marxist FARC rebels, during an attack on a jungle camp in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency. The operation included air strikes and fighting across the border.
The anti-U.S. Chavez, who had warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be "cause for war," threatened to send Russian-made fighter jets into U.S. ally Colombia if its troops also struck inside his OPEC country.
Eduador's president, Rafael Correa, also sent troops to the Colombian border and expelled Colombia's ambassador.
Some analysts viewed the moves as grandstanding by Chavez, who must realize that war with Colombia would bring serious repercussions to Venezuela's economy. But if war were to break out, the U.S., being allied with Colombia and having demonized Chavez for many years, would be in a real spot.
The official U.S. response sounded pretty lame. Reuters went on:
Washington, which backs Uribe's fight against the rebels with its largest military aid outside the Middle East, said it was monitoring developments after Chavez's "odd reaction."
At this point, the only real way George W. Bush can exert influence in Latin America is militarily, and his Iraq misadventure has made that option precarious to say the least. And, given the history of hostility toward Chavez, intervention down there could well turn into yet another quagmire that the American people can't afford.
The incident suggests U.S. vulnerability, and diminished influence, as part of the pathetic Bush legacy. Obsessed with Mideast adventures, Bush has left the U.S. looking a lot like the Richard Nixon metaphor of a "pitiful, helpless giant" when it comes to dealing with events on our own hemisphere.
Pablo Bachelet of McClatchy Newspapers posted a piece, "Bush Legacy: Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?", that is definitely worth a read. Bachelet, actually posting Saturday, the day before the troop movements were reported, wrote of Bush:
... his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.
He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.
I wouldn't exactly endorse some of the free-trade pacts referred to there. But at the core of the issues are the lack of serious U.S. political engagement in Latin America, and the inability to see how some economic rivals are making inroads in the region.
And the demonization of Chavez has proved costly. I have little doubt, judging from his actions, that Chavez is a power-monger (sorry, many fellow lefties). But the current administration has done plenty to antagonize him. There are conflicting accounts, but the U.S. government appears to have been, at the very least, willing to condone any success of the April 2002 coup attempt against him, had it been successful.
A bottom line here is that, whatever warts the man has, Chavez has won election after election in Venezuela, by wide margins. There haven't been credible challenges to the legitimacy of those elections. He didn't have to be appointed to the presidency by his country's high court. His popularity among common Venezuelans is beyond question, and so is his legitimacy as the nation's leader.
Normalization of relations with Venezuela would be a big step in the right direction. Chavez, I admit, makes me pretty nervous; but the U.S. fraternizes with anti-democratic strongmen who make me a lot more nervous. To wit, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is an ally. Chavez never will be, but I would say that with him, normalization of relations is a practical and desirable option.
It won't happen under a President McCain. It might under a President Obama, or a President Clinton. There's a lot of damage to be repaired, and we can pretty much assume that no Republican administration will do it.
Another starting point would be Cuba. Bachelet also wrote:
Some critics say changing the Cuba policy also will help. A new Cuba approach, says Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be a ''superb opening toward refurbishing'' the Latin America policy that he describes as "bordering on failure.''
In microcosmic terms, the U.S. has been hassling with folks across town, while the neighbors are about to start a shooting feud that we (in the editorial sense) helped start. It's time to come back to the neighborhood and rejoin the association.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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