Hugo Chavez vs. Charles Taylor

[WMS]

Taylor is a worse person, Chavez is a greater threat to the US.

And Flyers, anyone who controls a sizeable portion of the world's oil and uses it to fund communist geurillas in Colombia in an attempt to overthrow that goverment is a threat

So he gets his neighbors' despotic right-wing governments overthrown in favor of despotic left-wing governments.  Big deal.  We've spent the past 40 years attempting to overthrow despotic left-wing governments in favor of despotic right-wing governments.  Oh, except when we do it, it's ok, because we're America.  The Monroe Doctrine is right there in Pat Robertson's Bible, next to the passage about right-wing economics being pleasing to God.

This is not a threat to the US.

Beef old boy, Chavez is explicitly trying to drive the U.S. out of ALL of Latin America, and is interfering in other countries in ways up to and including funding revolutions against democractic governments. And he picked this fight in the first place for God knows what left-wing reason - he was hostile to the U.S. long before we ever did anything to him. And have you forgotten that he initially tried to stage a military coup in Venezuela against a democratic government?

And you are just wrong on Colombia - Uribe is quite popular, was elected democratically, and is fulfilling the wishes of his people, who for the record despise FARC as a pack of criminals who only pay lip service to helping out the poor. The Colombian government is legitimate by any standard. The rebels aren't.

[WMS]

I am not defending Chavez's actions in Colombia.  Simply stating that this is not a threat to the U.S.  It might be a threat to U.S. interests, but even a giant bloc of Communist regimes in Latin America poses no threat to the U.S.  It would be an enormous human tragedy in the region, but no skin off of our nose.

And America's track record of interventions in Latin America leaves us in no position whatsoever to criticize Chavez. 

And why should we be in Latin America to begin with?  As we're no longer the sole democracy in the world, and it's now logistically feasible for other democracies across the world to deploy forces anywhere, the Monroe Docrine no longer has much meaning.  The U.S. should not be playing the role of lone protector of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.  That is now the job of the world community.  AND, even if it were our job to protect democracy, we've completely botched that job up in recent decades, so it's not surprising that the people of Colombia aren't clamoring for our assistence.

Hugo Chavez is not a threat to the U.S.  He is a threat to humanity, just as Charles Taylor is.

Colombia is an ally - and yes, I do believe their citizenry likes the U.S. (YoMartin posted something on this last year IIRC) - so are you saying we should abandon an ally?

As for U.S. interests, unless we go autarkic and also refuse to allow U.S. citizens to go abroad we will have interests everywhere on the planet. In case you haven't noticed, we're very big and have, via allies, trading partners, and rogue states of concern, global connections.

As for the 'global community', gee, where to begin? We could take the matter before the UN Human Rights Commission...let's see, which paragon of human rights is in charge of it this year, Cuba, Iran, or Zimbabwe? Wait, let's ask for an intervention...by countries which have mostly expressed an interest in treating the FARC with the same or higher level of recognition as the legitimate Colombian government. Yeah, that'll go well. And I haven't even gotten to the 'let's see if we can re-enact the supercorrupt oil-for-food routine again' which a UN presence would lead to. The UN is untrustworthy, inefficient, corrupt, and screamingly anti-American and pro-autocracy.

Or perhaps the OAS is more your flavour? They have utterly refused to help Colombia and trot out the same bit about recognizing the FARC at the same level of legitimacy. They are also dominated by anti-American interests and have really refused to do anything about Venezuela whatsoever.

Or is there another grouping in mind?

Not to mention that the 'world community' is chock-full of countries who will do anything to hurt the U.S. based on their frothing rabid knee-jerk hatred and envy of the U.S. You want us to submit our foreign policy to them? Bush & Co. might not be the most efficient or effective group on the block, but they understand that the world does not get a vote on every aspect of American foreign policy.
*breathe in*This is why I am a FP neoconservative and not a FP liberal*breathe out*

[WMS]

But then why is doing business with communists so much worse than doing business with Pinochets or other such repressive regimes? If you want to argue the US should not be trading with any repressive regimes, fine, not a bad policy, but some consistency is needed.

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Screw those repressive governments who are hostile to you before screwing those repressive governments who are not hostile to you - just common sense.