The McCain Doctrine: Back to the Cold War in Latin America

[Joanne98]

The Cuba Embargo, Colombia Trade and Human Rights in Mexico Are Suddenly Major Issues in the US Presidential Campaign


By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
May 22, 2008

For eight years this newspaper has reported thousands of stories from Latin America that were ignored or distorted by commercial media in the United States, and rarely mentioned by its politicians. One of the only beneficial side effects of US President George W. Bush’s unsuccessful war in Iraq is that his administration had less time and fewer resources than previous administrations had to impose their invasive doctrines and policies on the Western Hemisphere.

During the Bush years, through democratic election after election, the peoples of most major Latin American countries – with the deplorable exceptions of Colombia and Mexico –moved forcefully toward more authentic democracy and increased protection of human rights. The distracted Bush administration has opposed Latin American democracy at every step, but with some exceptions, mostly with rhetoric and not deeds.

The exceptions, however, have been extreme and ugly: The US has continued to send billions of dollars in military aid, armament, mercenary organizations and herbicides to the corrupt narco-state of Colombia, an intervention begun by the Clinton administration in 2000 and continued by Bush. The White House now seeks to replicate the Colombian repression in the territory of its closest neighbor through Plan Mexico. Washington tried to give oxygen to a military-and-media coup d’etat attempt in Venezuela in 2002, only to be rebuked by that country’s people and 32 nations in the Organization of American States.

But until recently, the opposition Democratic Party in the United States had been joined at the hip with its Republican rivals, united in support of impositions toward other American nations. In the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee John Kerry – his foreign policy advisor team weighted down by the likes of Rand Beers and other former Clinton and Bush administration officials – basically said “me, too” to the attempted demonization of Venezuela’s Chavez, and did not distance his positions from those of President Bush on Plan Colombia, the Cuban embargo, trade policies, the drug war, human rights or any other major US policy regarding Latin America.

In the absence of such differences, there was little to no debate in the US media about the country’s heavy-handed stances toward its Latin American neighbors. For the past 28 years, through the administrations of Reagan, Clinton and two Bushes, failed and harmful policies have remained stagnantly in place.

But suddenly, everything has changed: Latin America is now on the front burner in the US presidential election that will climax with a vote in November.


Suddenly, a Real Debate

When the history of the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States and its impact on Latin American policy is written, July 23, 2007 will be looked back upon as the turning point. That’s when one of eight Democratic presidential candidates answered a question during a debate and indicated that he would be willing to hold face-to-face meetings with US-shunned world leaders, including President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and then-leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

That candidate – whom few thought last July that he could win his party’s nomination – was savagely criticized by his chief rivals for that openness: the frontrunner among them, Senator Hillary Clinton, called him “naïve and frankly irresponsible.” The young challenger – Senator Barack Obama – didn’t wilt or buckle under the pressure: he stuck to his guns, defended and advocated for that new diplomacy, and proceeded to roll out other policy positions – such as easing the four-decade US embargo of Cuba – that his chief rival refused to embrace.

When the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, attacked Obama anew this week, The New York Times recalled the genesis of the dispute:


The jumping off point for the debate has continued to be Mr. Obama’s response at a Democratic debate last year in which he said he would be willing to sit down without preconditions with the leaders of certain countries, including Cuba and Iran. The response exposed him to repeated broadsides, at first from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his Democratic opponent, and now Mr. McCain.

Fast forward to the present: nine months later, Obama is the presumptive nominee of his party for the presidency. And although the attacks on his breaks with longstanding US policies toward Latin American failed to derail him on the road to the Democratic nomination, the Republican McCain has now re-launched those same attacks all over again.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue53/article3104.html

[angstlessk]

1. great article, thanks for that..there are those who think Obama has not gone far enough

but he needs to go slowly until he has a constituency behind him.

[Joanne98]

2. True