A Closet Muslim President and a Clueless Secretary of State

Barack Obama and Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner







This is the Left Wing President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, talking about revolution to the Russians, obviously hosable, but you would not want her anywhere near a political office.

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American neutrality on the Falklands is a symptom of US foreign policy drift

By James Corum World Last updated: February 26th, 2010
Telegraph

James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.

The Bush administration got a lot of things wrong – but at least they usually had some idea of who America’s adversaries were and who America’s friends were. For example, Bush’s policy of maintaining the special relationship with Britain was a simple recognition of the close bonds of alliance, friendship and interests that the British and Americans have had since World War I.

In contrast, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are apparently clueless about some of the most basic aspects of foreign policy: supporting one’s friends and fencing in one’s adversaries. The declaration of neutrality on the issue of the sovereignty of the Falklands issued by the US State Department is clear proof of the uselessness of the Obama administration.

In the grand scheme of things it makes little sense for America to give moral support to the Kirchner government in Argentina. Kirchner is no friend of the US and Kirchner’s government is in deep domestic trouble for its gross mismanagement of the economy and its attempts to suppress the press criticism of the regime at home. One has to wonder what benefit America gets out of hurting Britain on this issue. Perhaps Obama thinks that the more Leftist Latin American regimes will somehow approve of the US. If that is the case, he is truly mistaken, as most Latin American nations dislike the Argentineans, and have little sympathy for the mess Argentina got into over the Falklands.

But this mess is just typical of the drift in US foreign policy – if one can say that it even HAS a coherent foreign policy these days. As I said, at the core of the problem is a simple inability to recognise and support our friends over adversaries. In his first year in office Obama made numerous apologies for America’s past to the Third World, he effusively greeted the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, he bowed low to the Saudi ruler, and called for a “reset” of relations with Russia – all the while implying that America was at fault for all these problems. At the same time he rudely undermined the security of America’s Eastern European allies by cancelling the ballistic missile defence with no notice and no prior discussion, he failed to push for a free trade agreement with Colombia – America’s strongest ally in South America – and he supported Chavez’s allies when they tried (luckily unsuccessfully) to unseat a democratic and pro-US government in Honduras.

A big part of the problem is a Secretary of State who is a lightweight as far as foreign policy is concerned. Obama brought Hillary Clinton into the cabinet for domestic policy considerations. He needed to put Mrs Clinton – and her husband – under tight control. As a powerful senator from New York, she would probably have taken over as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party and been able to challenge Obama’s “Chicago Gang” for control of the party.

Despite the acclaim that America’s mainstream media has heaped on Hillary Clinton over the years, her foreign policy background and experience before becoming Secretary of State was to accompany her husband on foreign trips and preside over “first wives” dinners for the spouses of visiting heads of state. One learns a lot about protocol and ceremonies – but this is no preparation for the real work of making policy. Clinton has no experience or education in foreign policy. She speaks no foreign languages and has never lived abroad. She lacks the intellectual temperament to be a foreign policy leader. Like Obama, she has long surrounded herself with sycophants.

On assuming office, Obama’s vision of foreign policy was simple: he would repudiate past American policies and the whole world would melt before the president’s charm. The administration somehow thought that we really didn’t have enemies with agendas completely hostile to our own – there were just countries that had become offended by US actions and they would happily cooperate with America as soon as the evil Republicans were gone. Well, it hasn’t worked – and there was no Plan B.
With a president overwhelmed by domestic problems, Hillary Clinton has failed to step in and set a foreign policy vision. Simply put, she does not have the brains or the experience to develop a coherent foreign policy vision for America. This is how we get policy mistakes on issues such as the sovereignty of the Falklands.

Hezbollah in Venezuela, weapons to FARC and of course, Obama busts Honduran cojones.

August 25, 2009
Obama Screws Up Latin American Policy
By Mona Charen NRO

The lights are going out in Venezuela. The Chavez-controlled legislature passed an education bill on Aug. 13 that will extinguish the last glimmers of free thought in the country's classrooms. The law is such a caricature of revolutionary legislation that it almost seems like a joke, like something out of Woody Allen's "Bananas." But it's not funny for Venezuelans. Schools will now be required to teach "Bolivarian doctrine," a vague catchall for Chavez's sloganeering. They will be supervised by "communal councils" (read commissars from the socialist party) and the central government will decide who can and who cannot enter universities and the teaching profession.

The new law stretches government power beyond the schools, permitting the state to suspend media outlets that negatively affect the public's "mental health." This comes just three weeks after the government declined to renew the licenses of 34 radio stations. "We haven't closed any radio stations, we've applied the law," Chavez explained. "We've recovered a bunch of stations that were outside the law, that now belong to the people and not the bourgeoisie." Get it? They've been "liberated."


Chavez is also saving elections from the "bourgeoisie" by gerrymandering districts before he next offers himself to the voters. When his motorcycle-mounted goons attacked the offices of Globovision, the only remaining independent TV station, with tear gas and rocks, Chavez piously condemned the attacks. But Globovision is not long for this world. He is remarkably blunt about his aims. As The Economist magazine reported, the Venezuelan dictator cited the Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci on the importance of seizing control of a nation's key institutions in order to control the minds of the citizenry. The most important institutions to conquer, Chavez added, were the media, the churches, and the schools. Last year, some of the same Chavez thugs who tear-gassed Globovision stormed the episcopacy in Caracas after the Catholic Church criticized the president.
Chavez condemned that attack as well.

Hugo Chavez has invited Hezbollah into Venezuela, and chased most of the Jewish community out. He has sent advanced weaponry to the FARC communist insurgency that has been terrorizing neighboring Colombia for 40 years, and has spawned a bevy of imitators in Latin America. Next month, he will visit his good friend Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

And yet President Obama has been silent. It isn't as if he has a strict policy against criticizing other nations. He's been quick enough to condemn Israel for settlement policies and Honduras for ousting Chavez wannabee Manuel Zelaya.

No, the Obama administration has kept mum because Barack Obama, schooled in leftist fairy tales from the cradle, seems to believe that what the region requires from the United States is not leadership but contrition. He was hopeful after the Summit of the Americas, he said, because the leaders of Latin America could "at least see that we are not dug in into policies that were formulated before I was born." Chavez didn't need to hand Obama a copy of "The Open Veins of Latin America" because our president probably already believes 80 percent of what's in the book.

Far from condemning our hemisphere's little Mussolini, the Obama administration has courted Chavez. The Department of State declared Venezuela's willingness to exchange ambassadors a "positive development."
And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, displaying the cold-blooded indifference to human rights that has characterized her approach to China, said, "Let's see if we can begin to turn (the) relationship (with Venezuela)."

Meanwhile, our beleaguered ally Colombia, which has done so much to stem the drug trade and to develop centrist and stable governance, still waits for ratification of the bilateral free trade agreement. And it will continue to wait. When Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., learned that the U.S. and Colombia were in negotiations to enhance cooperation against narcotraffickers, they expressed their dismay in a letter to the secretary of State, warning against closer ties with our most loyal ally in the region.

The Obama administration's reaction to the Zelaya case in Honduras and ongoing weakness toward Hugo Chavez reveal everything you need to know -- they don't know who our friends are.

Hugo Chavez, Bomber Pilot, Long Overdue for a Dirt Nap

And after Hugo got out of the flight simulator he decided to:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday ordered the U.S. ambassador out of the oil exporting country in an escalating battle between Washington and Latin America's left-wing leaders.

"Go to hell, s--- yankees, we are a dignified people, go to hell 100 times," Chavez shouted at a political rally to thousands of roaring supporters.

Chavez's move came a day after Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of his closest allies, expelled the U.S. ambassador in La Paz on accusations that he was instigating violent protests in the Andean nation.

The United States responded on Thursday by ejecting Bolivia's ambassador in Washington, and Chavez said the United States should send back Venezuela's top envoy straight away.

"We will send an ambassador when there is a new government in the United States, a government that respects the people of Latin America," he said.

Eight people were killed as violent anti-government protests flared in Bolivia on Thursday, creating havoc in its crucial natural gas industry.

Earlier in the day, Chavez spiced up a nascent campaign for Venezuela's tough local elections in November with allegations that retired military officers were planning to assassinate him. He also ordered a reduction of U.S. flights to Venezuela and pledged to support Morales in the event of a coup against him.

(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Meanwhile, here is a little glimpse of the real Venezuela and the trash they are exporting into the rest of Latin America:

Chávez Deserves More US Attention

Short Timer

Chávez and Colombia

May 16, 2008; Wall Street Journal

Interpol yesterday issued its findings on the authenticity of the computer files seized from Colombian terrorists in March, and they won't make Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez's day.

"We are absolutely certain that the computer exhibits that our experts examined came from a FARC terrorist camp," said Robert Noble, head of the international police agency. "No one can ever question whether or not the Colombian government tampered with the seized FARC computers."


Mr. Chávez has denied the link between his government – and himself personally – and the drug-dealing FARC, a Marxist "liberation" group that has terrorized Colombia for decades. He claims that the documents seized earlier this year in a Colombian military raid in Ecuador are forgeries designed to prepare an invasion of Venezuela by the Bush Administration. No doubt he'll stick to that story. If so, he'll have to add Interpol – and the Australian and Singaporean forensic experts who examined the files – to the list of conspirators.

Among other things, the documents detail personal meetings between Mr. Chávez and senior FARC leaders and the provision of money and materiel to the "rebels." Of a $250 million "loan" from Venezuela to FARC, Venezuela's Interior Minister wrote in one email, "Don't think of it as a loan, think of it as solidarity." The documents also describe Venezuela providing FARC with rocket-propelled grenades – and training in the Middle East on how to use them to shoot down Colombian military aircraft.

Interpol's certification proves that Mr. Chávez is trying to destabilize a U.S. ally. Maybe even Bill Delahunt (D., Mass.) and Mr. Chávez's other friends in the U.S. Congress will now have second thoughts about doing business with a proven supporter of terrorism in our own hemisphere.

Will Hugo Chavez Lose His Constituency?

Probably not. This is Hugo country. Other than the doctrinaire lefties, these are the neighborhoods that are his base of power. Rob from Pedro to pay Pablo and you will always get Pablo's vote, and he does. Chavez is an embarrassment to many, but there are more neighborhoods like this in Latin America than is healthy. Without those sprawling tin roofs there would be no Hugo Chavez.

What happens in Latin America matters.

Old Allies Abandon Chávez as Constitution Vote Nears
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 29, 2007; Page A01

CUMANA, Venezuela -- Few associates had been as loyal to President Hugo Chávez as the governor of the coastal state of Sucre, Ramón Martínez. And few are now more determined to defeat Chávez as he campaigns for constitutional changes that, if approved by voters on Sunday, could extend his presidency for life.

Chávez, 53 and in his ninth tumultuous year in office, was until recently predicted to win a referendum that would permit him to run for 8office indefinitely, appoint governors to federal districts he would create, and control the purse strings of one of the world's major oil-producing countries.

But Martínezand a handful of others who once were prominent pillars in the Chávez machine, have defected, saying approval of 69 constitutional changes would effectively turn Venezuela into a dictatorship run at the whim of one man. They have been derided by Chávez as traitors, but their unimpeachable leftist credentials have given momentum to a movement that pollsters say may deliver Chávez his first electoral defeat...

(continue)

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Chavez vows no ties with Colombia BBC

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he will have "no type of relationship" with the Colombian government while it is headed by President Alvaro Uribe.
"I could not, out of dignity," Mr Chavez told supporters in the town of Tachira in western Venezuela.

The Venezuelan government announced on Tuesday it was withdrawing its ambassador to Colombia.

The feud between neighbours and trading partners began when Mr Uribe stopped Mr Chavez mediating with Colombian rebels.

In response, Mr Chavez said he would freeze Venezuela's bilateral ties with its neighbour and close trading partner.

'Barefaced lies'

Speaking to supporters on Wednesday, Mr Chavez was forthright in his criticism of his Colombian counterpart.

"While President Uribe is president of Colombia I will have no type of relationship with him or with the government in Colombia," he said.

Mr Uribe was a president "capable of such barefaced lies, [who] disrespects another president that he has called a friend, one that he called on for help".

Mr Chavez accused Mr Uribe - a close US ally - of being a "pawn of the empire".

Relations between the two men seemed close in August - despite their apparent ideological differences - when Mr Uribe enlisted Mr Chavez's help in trying to arrange an exchange of prisoners with rebel-held hostages.

But last week Mr Uribe ended Mr Chavez's involvement, saying it was because the Venezuelan leader had directly contacted Colombia's army chief despite being told not to do so.

Earlier, Mr Uribe appeared to try to calm the situation, saying presidents should put aside their "angers" and "vanities" to get on with their work.

New mosques are popping up across Venezuela. No Problem?

Family values may not end at the US border but then neither do US security risks, none more so than those coming from Hugo Chavez. The Republicans can criticize the Democrats for considering talking with America's declared enemies, but when are the Republicans going to actually do something about them? It will not come from the present White House.The neglect and the action shortfall from The Bush Administration when it comes to US border security borders is a scandal.The Democrats are even worse.

Yesterday in the Senate, Barack Hussein Obama, made a ruling that secure borders and homeland security were not related. That may prove to be a costly mistake for the Democrats. Here is hoping.

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Venezuela and Iran team up for `axis of unity'


THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Thursday, Jul 26, 2007

A billboard of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst.

The tractors, lined up in shiny red phalanxes on the grounds of Veniran, a joint venture between Venezuela and Iran, are for peasants and socialist cooperatives across Latin America.

The influence, less visible but real enough, is for Chavez and Ahmadinejad, two presidents who hope this and other ventures will project their prestige and power.

The angst, if all goes to plan, is for Washington. Veniran might be tucked away in the backwater provincial capital of Ciudad Bolivar but it is part of a wider attempt by Chavez to forge a common front against the US.

The socialist radical is using Venezuela's vast oil wealth to strike commercial and political deals with countries that challenge the US such as Iran, Belarus, Russia and China, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, to rebuff what he refers to as the "empire".

"Chavez is a global player because right now he has a lot of money that he is prepared to spend to advance his huge ambitions," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. "He has worked tirelessly to upset US priorities in Latin America."

Supporters say he has worked tirelessly to support the poor and marginalized, for example through a US$250,000 loan to help farmers in Bolivia's lowlands build a coca industrialization plant, part of an effort to turn the leaf into cakes, biscuits and other legal products instead of cocaine.

"For years we have wanted to do this but no one would support us," said Leonardo Choque, leader of the Chimore federation of coca growers. "Then the Venezuelans come and offer us a loan with very low interest rates. And no conditions." Venezuela is also funding a new university nearby.

In contrast the US is accused of bullying Andean nations into destroying coca crops without promoting equally lucrative alternative livelihoods -- a big stick and a small carrot.

Of all Chavez's alliances the one with Iran is the most striking. Some of the estimated 180 economic and political accords signed with the mullahs over recent years are now bearing fruit.

The first "anti-imperialist cars" from a joint venture reached Venezuela's roads this month, with the first batch earmarked for army officers.

There is now a weekly flight between Caracas and Tehran, with a stopover in Damascus, operated by the Venezuelan state-controlled airline Conviasa and Iran's national carrier, Iran Air. New mosques are popping up across Venezuela and universities are teaching Farsi.

Iran is to help build platforms in a US$4 billion development of Orinoco delta oil deposits in exchange for Venezuelan investments.

The 4,000 tractors produced annually in Ciudad Bolivar are small beer in comparison but they have a symbolic value as agents of revolutionary change. Most are given or leased at a discount in Venezuela to socialist cooperatives that have seized land, with government blessing, from big ranches and sugar plantations.

Dozens have also been sent to Bolivia and Nicaragua.

"The idea is to help our brothers develop the land," said Reza Mahboubi, an Iranian manager at the plant. The technology was Iranian, as were the supervisors, but most of the 130 staff were Venezuelan. Asked if the objective was also to stick a finger in George Bush's eye, Mahboubi merely smiled.

A colleague who asked not to be named said the Iranians had been warmly welcomed: "I love it here. It's hot and sunny and they eat rice, just like back home. Except here I go out salsa dancing."

Chavez inaugurated the factory in 2005 with the then Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He has struck up a friendship with his successor, Ahmadinejad, and hailed their "axis of unity."

"The relationship is fundamentally geopolitical rather than economic," Shifter said. "It tells the world that Iran, an international pariah, is welcome in Latin America, which is traditionally regarded as the strategic preserve or `back yard' of the United States."