Bush Administration Increasingly Isolated on Venezuela

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By Mark Weisbrot

While a majority of Americans, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, now believe the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, the Bush administration is chalking up a lesser-known but increasingly obvious foreign policy failure closer to home. The Administration's efforts to isolate Venezuela as "undemocratic" have been backfiring all year, to the point where every move seems to isolate our own government in the hemisphere.

For anyone who has been to Venezuela, it's easy to see why no one wants to take Washington's side in this grievance. A few weeks ago I passed by a twenty-two-story government building in downtown Caracas, and saw about 200 students blocking the exits in a protest against the government. Trapped inside past quitting time were thousands of employees, including several cabinet-level ministers. A few police stood by calmly, not interfering. This went on for hours. There were no injuries or arrests. I thought of what would happen if people tried this in Washington D.C. There would be tear gas, pepper spray, heads cracked, and mass arrests. Some would get felony charges. The protest would be over in 10 minutes.

The next day I turned on the TV and on the biggest channels there were commentators and experts trashing the government, in ways that do not happen in the United States or indeed most countries in the world. I picked up the two biggest newspapers at a newsstand -- very slanted against the government, again like nothing in the U.S. It's pretty hard to make a case that Venezuela is less democratic than other Latin American countries, and no respectable human rights organization has tried to do so. The Venezuelan economy is booming, millions of poor people have access to health care and subsidized food for the first time, and President Chavez' approval ratings have soared to more than 70 percent -- according to opposition pollsters.

Still the Bush Administration perseveres on its lonely road. The most recent embarrassment came at the OAS (Organization of American States) meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this month, when the United States failed to convince other countries that the OAS should monitor and evaluate "democracy" within member countries. This measure was widely seen as an attempt to use the OAS against Venezuela, to which other countries responded by saying, "please take your fight elsewhere."


http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/2005_06_20.htm

There are still a few stooge holdouts, but they seem
beleaguered. It's really unprecedented. The US has always
done pretty much as it likes in Latin America, right up to
the last few years.

isolated from his own neighbors?

What the US did all over Latin America is nothing short of gross human rights violations and genocide in the name of 'freedom and democracy'. Kissinger, Bush, Negroponte, Abrams, etc, etc, etc, should all be in prison. Nathanial Davis, the ambassador to Chile from 1971-1973, was ambassador to Guatemala duing the late 1960s and in 1968 directed a "pacification program" that left 20,000 opponents to the RW government dead. In October after Allende's overthrow, he was appointed as Director General of Foreign Service. This POS should also be in prison. He's in his 80s and I understand wrote a book about Allende, which I read was almost apologetic. Maybe age brings a conscience.

Meanwhile, Allende is a hero to his people and I'll be interested to watch Michelle Bachelet, whose father was murdered by the Pinochet regime, become first President of Chile. She is a member of Allende's socialist party.

and parts of the Carribean are still in dispute, but the
tide is to the left. A part of the change seems to be due
to a change of attitude in the Latin American military
establishments following the Falklands War. They got tired
of being used and being the bad guys and stooges. A lot of
it has to do with not being afraid of El Norte like in the
old days. Still, you don't get a guy like Hugo Chavez in
power every day. He has really cleaned El Norte's clock.

A Bushist summary of Bushist's failures.

The administration was embarrassed when the Rev. Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster and former Republican presidential candidate, suggested last month that Chavez be assassinated.

Robertson eventually apologized, but to many Latin Americans the affair appeared to give credibility to Chavez's assertions that Bush was plotting to kill him.

When the United States tried to get the Organization of American States to make sure countries are governing more democratically, Venezuela successfully spearheaded a campaign to water down the initiative.

''Every time there is a public-relations crisis (the Bush administration) seems to be on the losing end,'' Diaz said.

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