Hillary’s Cynicism
Atilio BoronIn a press interview jointly offered by the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez, Mrs. Clinton referred to the arms race underway in Latin America in an astonishing display of cynicism. According to the State Department’s press release, she said that “we have expressed concern about the number of Venezuelan arms purchases. They outpace all other countries in South America and certainly raise the question as to whether there is going to be an arms race in the region. So we urge Venezuela to be transparent in its purchases, clear about its purposes. They should be putting in place procedures and practices to ensure that the weapons that they buy are not diverted to insurgent groups or illegal organizations, like drug trafficking gangs and other criminal cartels.”
Meanwhile in Quito, as she was saying all this, the summit of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Defense of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was floundering due to Colombia’s absolute and uncompromising opposition to the signing of a formal agreement, unanimously requested by the rest of the UNASUR governments, eleven in total, through which it might be guaranteed that American troops stationed in that country would not make incursions outside Colombian territory. A word to the wise.
Clinton’s declarations were made at almost20exactly the same time as the news released from the White House, that the universally condemned blockade against Cuba would be renewed another year and Obama remained impassive and unconcerned in the face of the case of the five Cubans imprisoned for more than ten years precisely for having fought against the terrorist organizations located in Miami. If we put these three pieces of news together, it’s evident that the expectations aroused by Obama’s arrival in the White House were illusions that have been bitterly dashed by the conduct of his administration.
The Secretary of State cannot ignore the fact that Caracas’s arms purchases reach a total that is far less than the military spending of other countries in the region. To begin with, they are much lower than the military expenditures of neighboring Colombia. According to the reports published by SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the military expenditures in Colombia are three times higher than in Venezuela, if American military aid is included; while in Chile the military outlays are twice as large as in Venezuela. This is standard information that Mrs. Clinton, or her advisors, should have known before delivering highly inaccurate figures. In the second place, the Secretary knows very well that Venezuela is threatened, besieged, demonized and hounded by Washington and its South American peon, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, whose background with links to drug trafficking20and paramilitaries has turned him into the White House’s docile hostage, unable to disobey any order coming from the United States government.
She also knows that the United States has decided to replace its military base at Manta (Ecuador) with seven – not one but seven – new military bases in Colombia. She also knows that Uribe, ever solicitous of his master´s commands, doesn’t want to sign any document that would tie his hands if and when the empire’s troops, scattered throughout his country, attack the neighbors, starting with Venezuela. She also knows that Venezuela has the legitimate right to defend itself, and that it should arm itself in order to repel a military aggression announced well ahead of time. It is outrageous that while Mrs. Clinton requests “transparency” from Caracas, her puppet in Bogotá refuses to make public the contents of the agreements signed with Washington regarding the seven military bases, or to open them for inspection by members of the South American Defense Council. Once again, the infamous double standard of U.S. foreign policy: one for the governments that refuse to kneel to the United States of America’s imperialism and another quite different for Washington’s friends and peons. Is this the change that Mr. Obama said he would bring to American politics?
The responsibility for this demented escalation of bellicosity rests upon Secretary Clinton and President Obama –20the military bases, the Fourth Fleet, the coup d’etat in Honduras, etcetera – in perfect synchronization with the mandate of the military-industrial complex, to which it seems that Obama has definitively submitted himself without even attempting the slightest struggle. Surely, history will not absolve them. (Translated by Sue Ashdown)
http://www.alainet.org/active/33158〈=es
September 21, 2009
Obama bullies Honduras
Now that Barack Obama leads American foreign policy, the ugly Yanqui bully is back in Central America. Today's Wall Street Journal continues it's coverage of US bullying the small Central American country of Honduras. The cause of the Obama administration's ire was the removal of former President Manuel Zelaya by the Honduran Supreme Court and Honduran Congress. If you followed the story in the antique media, the removal of Zelaya was a right wing coup preventing the left-leaning president from helping the poor. The Obama administration concurred with the coup d'etat story line and began pushing Honduras to take their ousted president back with a series of increasingly harsher actions culminating in the refusal to grant visas to Hondurans and cutting off all US aid to that tiny nation.
The Wall Street Journal and the author of The America's column, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, had a slightly different take on those events and lays out the argument that what transpired in Honduras wasn't a coup at all, but a leader who was deposed lawfully for violating the Honduran Constitution. The Wall Street Journal's version of events includes facts left out in other reporting, now backed up by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
"... a report filed at the Library of Congress by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides what the administration has not offered, a serious legal review of the facts. "Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system," writes CRS senior foreign law specialist Norma C. Gutierrez in her report."
All of the evidence to date clearly shows that the country of Honduras did the right thing both legally and morally, and helped prevent the rise of a leftist regime in Central America allied with Cuba and Venezuela. The actions of the Hondurans protected the Honduran Constitution and the separation of powers enumerated therein. There was no massive loss of life, nor a military coup; instead, there was an orderly transition to a new civilian leader (from the same political party as the ousted President).
Instead of rewarding the Honduran judiciary and Congress the Obama administration revoked their US visas. Can you imagine the outcry if George Bush had revoked the visas of an independent foreign judiciary because he didn't like their ruling? The Obama administration's actions display a pettiness and arrogance that run counter to the man who famously said "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist". This is yet another example that Obama says and what he does are often two different things.
When Obama said "Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace. We are ready to lead once more," what he meant was there is a new bully on the playground.
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