Absent a coherent U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, the best ally of democrats in the region has always been the inevitable economic backlash that socialist economic policies
When the United States commanded "street respect," it was achieved by adhering to a policy of "peace through strength." This was a proven policy that, regretfully, has been squandered over the past almost two decades. Nowhere is this more evident than in the failure of President Obama's outreach to America's enemies, particularly those in the Islamic world. The repeated humiliating gestures to Iran have been met with nothing but public mockery and contempt by the illegitimate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has cast our president as an amateur.
Oliver Stone has long has been one of America's best-known and controversial directors, making films lionizing Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat. But the director of "World Trade Center," "JFK" and "Platoon" has taken up a new cause - Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
The ambassador of Venezuela, whose government is widely criticized for civil rights abuses, denounced a House subcommittee for holding a hearing into press censorship under socialist President Hugo Chavez, calling it a "sad spectacle" and vilifying a Latin American human rights official for appearing before the U.S. Congress.
Hugo Chavez has been amusing himself lately spurning the advances by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Instead, he ought to give her a hug and a Chavista of the Year medal. After all, the U.S. secretary of state has been laboring recently at the task that Venezuela's strongman considers Job No. 1: making the case for socialism.
Those who disparage offshore drilling - and seem eager to ban it - ignore that the Gulf of Mexico accounts for one-third of U.S. oil production. Without domestic production, we would be spending even more on imported oil - which already is running $1.5 billion a day.
Thirty years ago, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick charged the Carter administration with hypocrisy and doublethink. Why, she asked in "Dictatorships and Double Standards," did President Carter always seem to find fault with the human rights records of friendly powers while letting unfriendly states off the hook? Why, she wondered, was the triumph of unfriendly states considered beneficial to America's "true interests?"
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - For his outspoken opposition to President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's best-known college student has been called a U.S. collaborator and has had his nose broken in a scuffle.
COLOMBIA
