|
I thought Obama's speech to the Miami mafia in May 2008 during the campaign was insulting to Latin America's new crop of great leaders. He said that "Latin America needs U.S. leadership." Clunk! But I gave him some benefits of the doubt on that speech (with its additional demagoguery about Chavez and "Monroe Doctrine" tone) because, a) it was his speech announcing a slightly more open policy on Cuba (dangerous territory), and b) it was a campaign and in the U.S. that means obligatory butt-kissing of the Miami mafia and rightwingers, fascists and Bushwhacks by Democrats apparently trying not to be Diebolded (or "Swift-boated").
I waited and watched. Next came the inexplicable Chavez bashing by Obama during Obama's inauguration week. I tried to write that off to bad advisers. Thence to Rio and shaking hands with Chavez and getting a book from Chavez that Obama apparently hasn't read. Obama announces a new U.S. policy of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. That turns out to be bullshit because, a) The U.S. was meanwhile secretly negotiating a huge U.S. military buildup in Colombia (so much for peace), in negotiations that were kept secret from the Colombian people, the Colombian legislature and all the other leaders and peoples of Latin America (so much for respect), and then came Honduras (so much for cooperation with Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other countries, the OAS, the EU and the UN). While Obama was yammering about "peace, respect and cooperation, McCain and Clinton-funded, corpo-fascist operatives in Honduras, the Pentagon and assorted fascist rotters in Honduras, Colombia and here were meanwhile planning a rightwing military coup that would destroy Honduran democracy.
In June somebody gives an order to the U.S. military in Honduras to stand down while the Honduran military and a rightwing coup fly the elected president out of the country at gunpoint, stopping to refuel at the U.S. military base. I didn't know who gave that order and began to wonder if the putsch was happening here and there at the same time, with Jim DeMint now effectively president of the U.S. or at least Secretary of State. Thence to the lying and backstabbing over the summer through today, and I have to conclude that either Obama is so weak that he has no control over Pentagon coup and war plans (that's Chavez's view--he said that Obama is "the prisoner of the Pentagon), or he is on board for Pentagon coup and war plans, the view I am tending toward now.
More insults against Latin America by Barack Obama are not a surprise to me. That he can lie like a Bushwhack is still appalling, though.
|