Hugo Chavez vs. Charles Taylor

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

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.

, and anyone who threatens to cut off our oil for God knows what reason is a threat to America.

Maybe if we didn't keep pretending the Cold War was still on, and stopped mucking around on ideological anti-communist crusades (which are really just about protecting corporate interests in banana republics), Marxists like Chavez wouldn't be so belligerent towards us.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

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.

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.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Chavez could wreck this nation's economy by shutting off the oil.

That foreign madmen and dictators can pull the strings of our economy is nobody's fault but our own.

Columbia is a democracy.  It is insulting and ignorant to say that are a "despotic right-wing government".

I retract.  But it doesn't change the fact that our horrible track record of intervention makes it impossible to criticize anyone else's.  Furthermore, I don't see the people of Colombia begging for our help, and even furthermore, it should be the job of the world community and/or the Pan-American community, not the US alone, to provide that help.

I do question whether Pinochet was the proper choice of a leader for Chile

Why is it up to The United States of America alone to make the determination of who is and isn't the proper choice of a leader for Chile?  I agree that the people of Chile may have had their right to self-determination taken away, but any restoration should be accomplished by international, multilateral means, not by the US acting unilaterally!  What happens in unilateralism, invariably, is that the interests of the intervening government takes precedence over the interests of the people we are supposedly "helping."  Look at Iraq: whose interests are being served there?

I'm not arguing "isolationism."  I'm arguing multilateralism and internationalism.  You know, those ideals that used to be the centerpiece of Republican foreign policy?  If it is not a direct threat to US security, as in a foreign force being deployed against us, we should be acting through the community of nations, not alone.  Yes, it might have made sense in 1820, but not in 2005.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

A communist takeover of all Latin America is "no skin off our nose"?  Do you have any idea the economic havoc to be wrought by such a thing?

If we stop acting like stubborn pricks and continue to do business with the communists, very little.  If we get all high-and-mighty about closing off trade with any country just because we don't like the way they run their economy, then yes, there would be plenty of havoc.

As for our past interventions in Latin America, they've been successful far more often than they have been otherwise.  It's been a long time since we had an intervention that can't be rationally defended.  Panama '89, Haiti '94, Mexcio '94, Grenada '83.  Most of these things worked out very well.

Noriega was a criminal arrest, not a US-engineered change of government.  Haiti is still a toilet, and just recently transitioned from Despotism to Anarchy (to use the CivIII terms), so I don't really see what good that accomplished.  Mexico was a bailout, not a US-engineered change of government.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

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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