US pres. front-runner Dean promises special relationship w/ Latin America

Also, summary of a scathing report from Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) about the Americas Summit follows.


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US presidential front-runner Howard Dean (Dem.) is promising a special relationship between the United States and Latin America based on equal partnership saying that the current occupant of the White House in Washington D.C. has "promised us a foreign policy based on humility ... but he gave us a foreign policy based on humiliation."

The former Vermont Governor says that President George W. Bush had "squandered opportunities to foster democracy and economic growth ... we have the worst relations with Mexico than we've had in a long time ... we have the worst relations with Canada despite the smiley photo opportunity with Paul Martin, the new prime minister of Canada!"

Effectively Bush returned to Washington with his tail between his legs after the Americas summit of 34 leaders in Monterrey (Mexico) that focused on economic development, free trade and rooting out corruption ... Dean says that Bush devoted time to mending fences with Mexico and Canada that had frayed over their opposition to the United States' unilateral war against Iraq.

"The extraordinary thing is, four years into Vicente Fox's presidency, Bus has blown the biggest chance that we have had in a century to fundamentally change Mexico ... the President of the United States abandoned him because he disagreed with him on Iraq ... he promised us a foreign policy based on humility, but he gave us a foreign policy based on humiliation."

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=14504

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Monterrey Summit of the Americas Gathering Will Unleash Latin America’s Deep-Seated Animosity Towards the United States and Feature Glad-Handing by Bush

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It’s far more than just Mexico, as Fox returns for another round.

· Colin Powell’s Hyper-Active Ideological Panzer Brigade: Roger Noriega, Otto Reich, Dan Fisk and John Bolton are at the root of the degradation of U.S. regional policy, much to the outrage of Latin America.

· Monterrey’s official agenda is destined to be a skeletal photo-op in search of some substance to hang on it.

· Summit has a contrived agenda featuring a pro-forma dialogue with the region’s civic society on social justice issues, as well as building democracy and thwarting corruption sessions, with U.S. delegation members certain to perfunctorily clap their hands and quickly move on to grown up matters like trade and security themes.

· Low quality of key U.S. hemispheric policymakers makes them more akin to a gang of corner hustlers than to even a distant semblance of seasoned diplomats with a democratic vision.

· A disconnected and disappointing Powell appears either unwilling or unable to rein in his junior colleagues, perhaps because he shares the same value system of the Keystone cops that he has set loose on the region, some of whom he perhaps mockingly describes as “honorable” men. He fails to see that U.S.-Latin American relations have sunk to their lowest level that they have been at since the overthrow of Chile’s President Allende in 1973.

· Washington touts democracy, but is not prepared to practice it.

· Under Bush, U.S. regional policy is made to pass through a Cuban, and now a Venezuelan prism, with Miami now the center of the U.S. constituency backing the present ultra-conservative initiatives being launched by the Powell cabal.

<http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.02_Summit_Americas.htm>

Hope he'll continue to study the horrendous problems _Bush has caused, and devise some expert way to get this dreadful situation corrected.

The second article was exceptional: a wonderful exposition of the fix the _Bush administration has on Latin America, and how utterly unwise, indecent, and alarming it is. From the article:

(snip) The Right-wing Cabal

Demonstrably, Secretary of State Powell has been either unwilling or unable to control the movement of the cabal that now dominates U.S.-Latin American policymaking, which is being rapidly degraded into an Al Qaeda-type operation by an extremist group that does not take prisoners. Many have commented upon the “trashification” of U.S. regional diplomacy under its present management and the rock-bottom lack of respect that Latin America presently has for the U.S. This is but one of the costs of a patently mooncalf policy. One resonating aspect of this lamentable state of affairs is that several of the prime ideologues who are now orchestrating area policy are either alumni or close collaborators of the now retired arch North Carolina ultra-conservative on regional affairs, former Senator Jesse Helms, who eventually rose to the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These include Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, Special Presidential Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, Dan Fisk. These, together with Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, represent the cabal which today is the leading factor in the skewed direction U.S.-Latin American policymaking is now being taken.

Another shared attribute of this group of extremists is that a disproportionate number of them come from Cuban-American backgrounds and have based their careers on a crusade not only to vilify Fidel Castro, but to take him on, mano a mano, through fair means or foul. Moreover, the pathetic criteria has been allowed to become gospel truth in the Bush administration that one must be an extremist Cuban exile to qualify for a position dealing with Cuba. In their strategy, the point is not so much to make policy, but rather to see to it that no policy is made – that the issue is frozen, just as the majority of the U.S. population wishes that policy toward Cuba be liberalized.

Of the dozen most important positions within the administration dealing with hemispheric issues, at least half of them are claimed by extremist Cuban Americans. In fact, it is no accident that although there are at least 38 million Hispanics in this country, of which no more than 1.4 million of these are of Cuban descent, this last mentioned group – because of the key importance of Miami and Florida in national politics – is in the invidious position of exercising disproportionate power over Latin American issues through occupying an inordinately high percentage of staff positions affecting them.

Although they are not of Cuban American descent, Roger Noriega, Dan Fisk and John Bolton join with their Cuban colleagues in the Bureau, Pentagon and the National Security Council, to form a tight claque of tough-tempered ideologues, with an occasional assist from Condoleezza Rice, always ready to browbeat those they see as being leftist (thus dangerous), if only because such leaders have formal relations with Cuba or have doubts about the relevance of neo-liberal economics to their societies. Such leaders become targets mainly because the ideologues have an obsession to seize the initiative in the State Department and other federal agencies dealing with the Cuba issue in order to lead the final jihad against Havana. Several of them, like Reich and Bolton, are infamous for their weaving of counterfeit plots, their artful elaborations, total inventions, as well as their arrant lying. In fact, Reich barely missed being indicted for a string of violations of federal rules during the Contra era, when he headed an almost covert Reagan propaganda operation for the Contra cause, amusingly known as the Office of Public Diplomacy. The danger is not that these people have begun to believe their own concoctions, but that they are now prepared to carry them out, since Powell cannot be trusted to curb his junior colleagues’ sham policies, which are more reflective of a disreputable river boat poker game where bluffs, tricks and deception prevail rather than serious diplomacy. (snip)

Really great piece. Thanks a lot for posting it.