Latin America flourishing from lack of U.S. focus

[bemildred]

---

It is slowly becoming clear, however, that there is another winner: Latin America. With the United States so totally consumed by the Iraq conflict, it has no time, energy or political capital to crack down on challenges south of the Rio Grande. Sensing their historic chance, many Latin nations have embarked on experiments that the US would in past eras have instantly stepped in to crush.

The independence that many Latin American countries have shown in the last five years borders on outright defiance of US power. Yet to a degree unprecedented in modern history, Washington is allowing them to do as they please.

This week voters in Paraguay elected a left-leaning president who admires Che Guevara and whose three activist brothers were tortured during the long US-sponsored dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Although he is likely to be the newest Latin American president to join the club of anti-Yanqui leaders, the US made no concerted effort to prevent his victory.

Just a few days before, it was reported that Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, who as the foreign minister of Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s was one of the era's most virulently anti-American figures, will be the next president of the United Nations General Assembly. Under other circumstances, Washington might well have launched a full-scale campaign to block his candidacy.

http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/45d771c7290844e9/id/351823/cs/1/

[Demeter]

1. THERE'S Your Legacy, George W. Bush!

A Double-Edged Legacy:

EITHER: W freed the South by destroying his own nation,

OR: W lost the South by his insane economic and worldpolitick.

[TooBigaTent]

2. I guess the Bushes get off on raping Iraqi children more than the Reagans got off

on raping adult nuns in South and Central America.

Who would have guessed?

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. the geopolitical version of the proverbial simpleton who cannot walk and chew gum at the same time

.
.
.

From the posted article:

"The US has not suddenly become more tolerant of challenges from south of its border. It simply has no resources left to deal with them.

The Bush administration has become the geopolitical version of the proverbial simpleton who cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.

Overwhelmed by what is happening in and around Iraq, it is paying little attention to other parts of the world. No region has taken more advantage of this felicitous turn of events than Latin America.

Many voters in the US were horrified when senator John McCain suggested that the occupation of Iraq might last for another century. Latin Americans, however, could be forgiven for liking the idea. The last five years have shown them that the more fully the US sinks into its Middle East quagmire, the more freedom they will have to chart their own futures.
_________________________________________________________________________

Interesting article for sure.

[bemildred]

4. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

The Bushite usurpation was bound to be good for at least some of the subjugated peoples of the American Empire, and it's enemies and opponents. So it has been. When rulers are incompetent, ignorant, and stupid, it creates opportunities for others.

One can imagine the wiser and more subtle of our enemies rooting for McCain for the same sort of reasons. Bush has been a gift to China, Russia, Iran, Latin America, etc. and death and destruction for vast swathes of the Middle East and the USA itself.

[RethugAssKicker]

5. This is a GOOD thing !....

I'm not quite sure if you agree ?

[Judi Lynn]

6. Had no idea Fernando Lugo's brothers were tortured under Stroessner! That means he joins other

prominent South Americans who were too painfully close to right-wing dictatorships made powerful by U.S. meddling. Argentina's former President Nestor Kirchner, husband of President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, and Chile's President Michelle Bachelet, tortured by agents of U.S. backed monster Augusto Pinochet, were both imprisoned and tortured by the regimes in their countries, helpless, suffering victims of right-wing politics.

This adds a deeper, even more serious tone to the entire situation. These people are not some kind of idiot politicians of the kinds we are accustomed to seeing! They are people who have been through hell itself.

_Bush's answer? Fight their vision of unity and regional strength as if it were the gates of hell closing on you. Fight their long-sought triumph over greedy, foreign all-out barbarism as if it were your own death. It's either these good people or you, _Bush, according to your unprofessional world view.

_Bush has the answer! Why not send the Fourth Fleet to cruise the waters and threaten them? That'll make things right.

It's REALLY time for the country to get an intelligent person in the White House. That let's out John McCain immediately. It's time to turn the page on American bullying and meddling and time to learn about diplomacy again, and self-control for the first time in history.

[bemildred]

7. This is the Bushite answer:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3282520

I mean, it's a dumb shit answer, but it's the only one they have.