Chavez isn't a threat to Americans or their interests.He's a threat to greedy Americans whose interests are a threat to honorable Americans' interests
Hey Folks -
Below are dueling columns on the "threat" of Hugo Chavez to America.
See if you don't think that one seems more rationally based on facts and one is intended as political propaganda.
Why the difference??
- Uke Man
Mark Weisbrot: Is Chavez a threat to Latin America's stability?
No: Bush administration's anti-Venezuela policies have skewed the scene
Monday, April 14, 2008
By Mark Weisbrot
Of all the nonsense that we hear regularly about Venezuela, the idea that the country is a security threat is probably the most ridiculous.
For six years, since the Bush administration supported a failed coup against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez, Washington has been sporadically accusing Venezuela of links to terrorism.
During those six years, the charges have been made by anonymous officials, and the U.S. government never produced supporting evidence. Now the Colombian government claims it has proof of the Chavez government's support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly known as FARC, a guerrilla group that has been active for four decades. The evidence comes from documents alleged to have been found on laptops captured by the Colombian military in a cross-border bombing and incursion into neighboring Ecuador on March 1.
As with the allegations that led us into the Iraq war, there is less here than meets the eye. First, as The New York Times recently acknowledged, it is impossible to authenticate the files independently. And, even if some of the documents are real, there is nothing showing that Venezuela provided material aid to FARC.
For example, a claim that made headlines all over the world about Chavez supposedly providing $300 million to the guerrillas turned out to be based on a far-fetched interpretation of one alleged document.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration is investigating whether it should place Venezuela on a special list of "state sponsors of terrorism," which would imply at least some kind of economic sanctions. Some right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives have come up with a similar effort in the form of a proposed resolution.
There will be more of this posturing, combined with wild accusations, because this is an election year. The past two presidential elections were determined by the votes of a few hundred thousand right-wing Cuban-Americans in Florida. These voters hate Venezuela, and we can expect that many politicians will pander to them. On the other hand, Venezuela is our fourth-largest oil supplier and a major importer of U.S. goods, and saner heads will take that into account.
The cheap political points scored by U.S. politicians come at a cost in the rest of the hemisphere. The Bush administration, which is attempting to isolate Venezuela, has accomplished the opposite: Washington is more isolated than ever in Latin America.
When Colombia invaded Ecuador, almost every country south of the Rio Grande condemned this violation of Ecuador's sovereignty, which was also widely seen as carried out with U.S. help or at least approval. When the ensuing political and diplomatic fight was settled -- with no help from Washington -- Ecuadorian President Lula da Silva of Brazil declared Chavez to be "the great peacemaker" in the conflict.
The same is true for the hostage problem in Colombia, where Chavez's efforts to mediate received widespread praise from Europe, Latin America and even the families of the U.S. military contractors held by FARC.
Everyone but U.S. officials in Washington appears to be interested in a negotiated solution to release the hostages held by FARC. When Venezuela mediated a release of hostages Dec. 31, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, France, and Switzerland were there. Washington was noticeably absent.
Washington has alienated Latin America through economic policy prescriptions, which are widely associated with Latin America's unprecedented long-term economic failure, through proposed free-trade agreements, which grow more unpopular every year and through the militaristic and failed war on drugs.
The Bush administration thinks it can turn this around by scapegoating Venezuela and hurling accusations of support for terrorism. It won't work; nobody in the region is buying it.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
weisbrot@cepr.net
Lawrence J. Haas: Is Chavez a threat to Latin America's stability?
Yes: Machinations with Iran, OPEC and FARC - no doubt about his goals
Monday, April 14, 2008
By Lawrence J. Haas
After Colombia bombed a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp early this month, killing a key leader and 20 followers of the notorious terrorist group, Colombian officials said a computer they found at the site showed that FARC recently received $300 million from Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez.
Chavez's lar-gesse, and his longstanding links to FARC which also came to light, explain his threatening behavior after the bombing, which included a strong denunciation of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and threats to move 10,000 troops to Venezuela's border with Colombia.
Tensions have since eased among Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, the nation where the raid occurred. But Chavez's bluster provides the latest evidence that the Venezuelan strongman presents a growing danger to regional peace and stability and a thorny challenge to the United States.
In the region, Chavez hopes to build a multinational counterweight to the United States and its allies by spreading his socialist vision, strengthening his ties to like-minded states such as Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and providing aid to terrorists that target Western interests.
More broadly, he is strengthening his ties to the outlaw regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons, cutting business deals with Tehran and promising to use oil as a weapon if Washington confronts Tehran more aggressively.
Unfortunately, U.S. officials cannot agree on how to respond. President Bush promotes trade between the United States and key South American nations, such as Colombia, to strengthen U.S. ties to our allies and reduce chances that Chavez will coax any of them to his side.
Congress, however, won't pass the U.S.-Colombia Trade Partnership, citing lingering human-rights problems -- even though Uribe is making progress on human rights, reducing corruption, fighting terrorists and paramilitary forces and building a prosperous free-market economy.
In fact, the House recently voted to bolster Chavez's oil power by raising taxes on the largest U.S.-based oil companies while leaving others, including Venezuela's state-owned Citgo, exempt.
This will not do. Chavez is too great a danger to regional peace and stability to become an unlikely beneficiary of polarizing politics between a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.
The Venezuelan's ties to FARC date at least to 1992, when the group gave him $150,000 while he served prison time for an attempted coup, according to computers found at the bombed FARC site.
Investigators also found evidence that Chavez worked with FARC to destabilize Uribe's government and to build global legitimacy for the terrorist group, which specializes in launching attacks, massacring citizens, taking hostages, recruiting minors and trafficking in cocaine.
Were that not threatening enough to hemispheric peace, Chavez's "axis of unity" with Ahmadinejad -- as the leaders call their relationship in a retort to Bush's inclusion of Iran in his axis of evil -- adds another ingredient to the toxic stew. Their alliance gives Tehran, its terrorist minions and its anti-Western ideology a footprint by America's backdoor.
Iran's key terrorist client, Hezbollah, has worked in Latin American since the 1990s, using the tri-border area alongside Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina to launch some of the decade's most spectacular attacks against Jewish sites. Now, evidence suggests Hezbollah is growing its presence in Venezuela.
Chavez is also teaming with Ahmadinejad to make trouble for the United States in Iran's neck of the world. Late last year, the duo tried to persuade the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries not to price its oil in U.S. dollars anymore.
The Saudis shot down the idea, but failure did not humble Chavez. He predicted oil would hit $200 a barrel if the United States attacked Iran or Venezuela, making clear that he will remain a threat to hemispheric stability and a challenge to U.S. interests in this vital region.
Lawrence J. Haas is vice president of the Committee on the Present Danger. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
larry@larryhassonline.com
Below are dueling columns on the "threat" of Hugo Chavez to America.
See if you don't think that one seems more rationally based on facts and one is intended as political propaganda.
Why the difference??
- Uke Man
Mark Weisbrot: Is Chavez a threat to Latin America's stability?
No: Bush administration's anti-Venezuela policies have skewed the scene
Monday, April 14, 2008
By Mark Weisbrot
Of all the nonsense that we hear regularly about Venezuela, the idea that the country is a security threat is probably the most ridiculous.
For six years, since the Bush administration supported a failed coup against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez, Washington has been sporadically accusing Venezuela of links to terrorism.
During those six years, the charges have been made by anonymous officials, and the U.S. government never produced supporting evidence. Now the Colombian government claims it has proof of the Chavez government's support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly known as FARC, a guerrilla group that has been active for four decades. The evidence comes from documents alleged to have been found on laptops captured by the Colombian military in a cross-border bombing and incursion into neighboring Ecuador on March 1.
As with the allegations that led us into the Iraq war, there is less here than meets the eye. First, as The New York Times recently acknowledged, it is impossible to authenticate the files independently. And, even if some of the documents are real, there is nothing showing that Venezuela provided material aid to FARC.
For example, a claim that made headlines all over the world about Chavez supposedly providing $300 million to the guerrillas turned out to be based on a far-fetched interpretation of one alleged document.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration is investigating whether it should place Venezuela on a special list of "state sponsors of terrorism," which would imply at least some kind of economic sanctions. Some right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives have come up with a similar effort in the form of a proposed resolution.
There will be more of this posturing, combined with wild accusations, because this is an election year. The past two presidential elections were determined by the votes of a few hundred thousand right-wing Cuban-Americans in Florida. These voters hate Venezuela, and we can expect that many politicians will pander to them. On the other hand, Venezuela is our fourth-largest oil supplier and a major importer of U.S. goods, and saner heads will take that into account.
The cheap political points scored by U.S. politicians come at a cost in the rest of the hemisphere. The Bush administration, which is attempting to isolate Venezuela, has accomplished the opposite: Washington is more isolated than ever in Latin America.
When Colombia invaded Ecuador, almost every country south of the Rio Grande condemned this violation of Ecuador's sovereignty, which was also widely seen as carried out with U.S. help or at least approval. When the ensuing political and diplomatic fight was settled -- with no help from Washington -- Ecuadorian President Lula da Silva of Brazil declared Chavez to be "the great peacemaker" in the conflict.
The same is true for the hostage problem in Colombia, where Chavez's efforts to mediate received widespread praise from Europe, Latin America and even the families of the U.S. military contractors held by FARC.
Everyone but U.S. officials in Washington appears to be interested in a negotiated solution to release the hostages held by FARC. When Venezuela mediated a release of hostages Dec. 31, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, France, and Switzerland were there. Washington was noticeably absent.
Washington has alienated Latin America through economic policy prescriptions, which are widely associated with Latin America's unprecedented long-term economic failure, through proposed free-trade agreements, which grow more unpopular every year and through the militaristic and failed war on drugs.
The Bush administration thinks it can turn this around by scapegoating Venezuela and hurling accusations of support for terrorism. It won't work; nobody in the region is buying it.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
weisbrot@cepr.net
Lawrence J. Haas: Is Chavez a threat to Latin America's stability?
Yes: Machinations with Iran, OPEC and FARC - no doubt about his goals
Monday, April 14, 2008
By Lawrence J. Haas
After Colombia bombed a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp early this month, killing a key leader and 20 followers of the notorious terrorist group, Colombian officials said a computer they found at the site showed that FARC recently received $300 million from Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez.
Chavez's lar-gesse, and his longstanding links to FARC which also came to light, explain his threatening behavior after the bombing, which included a strong denunciation of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and threats to move 10,000 troops to Venezuela's border with Colombia.
Tensions have since eased among Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, the nation where the raid occurred. But Chavez's bluster provides the latest evidence that the Venezuelan strongman presents a growing danger to regional peace and stability and a thorny challenge to the United States.
In the region, Chavez hopes to build a multinational counterweight to the United States and its allies by spreading his socialist vision, strengthening his ties to like-minded states such as Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and providing aid to terrorists that target Western interests.
More broadly, he is strengthening his ties to the outlaw regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons, cutting business deals with Tehran and promising to use oil as a weapon if Washington confronts Tehran more aggressively.
Unfortunately, U.S. officials cannot agree on how to respond. President Bush promotes trade between the United States and key South American nations, such as Colombia, to strengthen U.S. ties to our allies and reduce chances that Chavez will coax any of them to his side.
Congress, however, won't pass the U.S.-Colombia Trade Partnership, citing lingering human-rights problems -- even though Uribe is making progress on human rights, reducing corruption, fighting terrorists and paramilitary forces and building a prosperous free-market economy.
In fact, the House recently voted to bolster Chavez's oil power by raising taxes on the largest U.S.-based oil companies while leaving others, including Venezuela's state-owned Citgo, exempt.
This will not do. Chavez is too great a danger to regional peace and stability to become an unlikely beneficiary of polarizing politics between a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.
The Venezuelan's ties to FARC date at least to 1992, when the group gave him $150,000 while he served prison time for an attempted coup, according to computers found at the bombed FARC site.
Investigators also found evidence that Chavez worked with FARC to destabilize Uribe's government and to build global legitimacy for the terrorist group, which specializes in launching attacks, massacring citizens, taking hostages, recruiting minors and trafficking in cocaine.
Were that not threatening enough to hemispheric peace, Chavez's "axis of unity" with Ahmadinejad -- as the leaders call their relationship in a retort to Bush's inclusion of Iran in his axis of evil -- adds another ingredient to the toxic stew. Their alliance gives Tehran, its terrorist minions and its anti-Western ideology a footprint by America's backdoor.
Iran's key terrorist client, Hezbollah, has worked in Latin American since the 1990s, using the tri-border area alongside Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina to launch some of the decade's most spectacular attacks against Jewish sites. Now, evidence suggests Hezbollah is growing its presence in Venezuela.
Chavez is also teaming with Ahmadinejad to make trouble for the United States in Iran's neck of the world. Late last year, the duo tried to persuade the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries not to price its oil in U.S. dollars anymore.
The Saudis shot down the idea, but failure did not humble Chavez. He predicted oil would hit $200 a barrel if the United States attacked Iran or Venezuela, making clear that he will remain a threat to hemispheric stability and a challenge to U.S. interests in this vital region.
Lawrence J. Haas is vice president of the Committee on the Present Danger. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
larry@larryhassonline.com
posted by Ukulele Man at 2:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home