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What arrogance! Lunatics like Menendez serve the function of making arrogant "Monroe Doctrine" statements like Lugar's only seem reasonable. They are not, really. ALL OF LATIN AMERICA WANTS CUBA BACK IN THE OAS AND NORMALIZATION OF U.S./CUBA RELATIONS! So what frigging right does the U.S. have to say "it's too early"?
NONE!
And if U.S. meddling in Latin America continues, the southern half of this hemisphere will simply go its own way. Good leftist governments have been elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The left--that is, the leaders who support social justice, Latin American sovereignty and Latin American cooperation, and oppose U.S. domination--now far outnumber the toady leaders who are propped up by our corpo/fascist-serving government--with BILLIONS of U.S. tax dollars in military aid to the narco-fascists running Colombia and to the tool of the oil industry running Mexico, with the nazification of Peru proceeding apace from similar U.S. military funds and "free trade" (free fire zone on union leaders and other leftists), and the U.S. military dominating Panama (thus, a fascist billionaire won the presidency this month). And that's about it. Four U.S. toady countries. The fascists love the U.S. and the U.S. loves the fascists and would like to be rid of the democrats with a small d.
However, at least one of the few remaining countries with fascist leadership support welcoming Cuba back to the OAS and ending the insane U.S. policy against Cuba. Mexico recognized the Castro government long ago. This doesn't mean that the U.S. can't arm-twist Calderon to vote against it, but Mexico's official policy is typical of the overwhelming sentiment in Latin America about Cuba. (I'm not sure of Colombia, Peru and Panama, as to official positions.)
South America has formed its own economic/diplomatic organization--UNASUR--along the lines of the EU Common Market, by which they can evade--and have evaded--the U.S. influence at the OAS which always operates against the interest of Latin Americans. When the Bushwhacks tried to topple Evo Morales' government in Bolivia, this last September, and the Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia for their collusion with fascist rioters and murderers, the newly formed UNASUR was the vehicle of unity and resistance to that assault. Earlier last year, before UNASUR was formalized, they took the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid against Ecuador to the informal, all Latin American Rio Group, and there prevented the war that Donald Rumsfeld had his heart set upon starting between Colombia and the oil rich states of Ecuador and Venezuela. Again, without the U.S. there, with its bully power overriding everybody else, the leaders of Latin America were able to solve the problem. The OAS is over--in effect, if not yet in fact. The peoples and leaders of Latin America are onto it, as an unfair, unequal forum for their concerns. So, Lugar coming along with this snotty statement--"while it's too early..." blah, blah, blah--strikes me as 'whistling in the dark.' He wishes, mightily, that this attitude is still relevant in these vastly changed circumstances in Latin America, with leftist leaders all over the map, and every leader across the political spectrum advocating respect for the sovereignty of Latin American countries. It is not relevant--except as a clue to Obama's problem in facing a united left in Latin America. It sticks out. It is old hat. It comes from another era.
Lugar may be important to the U.S. facing this new reality, but that does not mean that I have to swallow his 'centrist' B.S., pushed to the right by the far right. The issue is NOT that it's "too early." The issue is that it may well be TOO LATE for the U.S. to regain the respect of Latin Americans.
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