I think an underrated success of the Obama administration has been the way he pulled us back from the brink of a pointless Cold War dynamic the Bush administration had landed us in in South America. And he did it pretty easily—basically just resolving to stay out of any wars of words with Hugo Chavez, shake hands, and focus on concrete issues. It turns out that for all the huffing and puffing, there’s really no actual conflict between the United States and Latin America’s leftists.
But this seems to have left Chavez a bit adrift and looking to push the envelope. How else to explain the idea of praising Idi Amin in a speech:
About former Ugandan President Idi Amin, Mr Chavez said: “We thought he was a cannibal… I don’t know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot.”
Idi Amin seized power in 1971. About 300,000 people were killed during his eight-year rule.
That’s really not the kind of statement that bolsters one’s confidence in the man’s commitment to liberalism and democracy. I would link to a Human Rights Watch report on Chavez’s impact on Venezuela’s political institutions but everyone knows that HRW is a non-credible group obsessed with unfair slams on Israel so their criticism of Chavez must somehow be part of their vast conspiracy.
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