The Obama-Chavez Handshake Non-Issue...
Just what in the heck is going on with the Right making some kind of issue out of President Obama greeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?
What exactly are they hoping to achieve with such blatant hypocrisy?
After all, there's a long and distinguished history of Republican Presidents gripping and grinning with folks we'd consider dictators and authoritarian rulers. Ike and Khrushchev. Nixon and Mao. Reagan and Gorbachev. Bush 43 and Putin.
And, though not a president, who can forget Don Rumsfeld chillin' like a villain with Saddam Hussein as the U.S. sold him the chemical weapons he later used on the Iranians during their war in the '80s? Right about the time the USS Stark was hit by two Iraqi Exocet missiles, killing 37 sailors. Iraq was never held accountable for that, nor were the Reagan and Bush administrations ever blamed for the mixed signals that led Saddam to think he could simply seize Kuwait without repercussions three years later.
I suppose one could argue that Hugo Chavez doesn't pose the same threat as the Soviets, Red Chinese or Iraq at the peak of its military power.
To which I'd counter with, "then why the f*ck are you bothering me with this Chavez handshake crap?"
And even if we were to agree on Chavez, then I'd expect you to agree that similar Republican meetings and handshakes with dozens of tinhorn dictators and would-be "freedom fighters" -- paragons of humanity like Augusto Pinochet, Yassir Arafat, Mobutu Sese Seko, Dr. Jonas Savimbi, Anastasio Somoza and "Baby Doc" Duvalier -- were just as indefensible.
What exactly are they hoping to achieve with such blatant hypocrisy?
After all, there's a long and distinguished history of Republican Presidents gripping and grinning with folks we'd consider dictators and authoritarian rulers. Ike and Khrushchev. Nixon and Mao. Reagan and Gorbachev. Bush 43 and Putin.
And, though not a president, who can forget Don Rumsfeld chillin' like a villain with Saddam Hussein as the U.S. sold him the chemical weapons he later used on the Iranians during their war in the '80s? Right about the time the USS Stark was hit by two Iraqi Exocet missiles, killing 37 sailors. Iraq was never held accountable for that, nor were the Reagan and Bush administrations ever blamed for the mixed signals that led Saddam to think he could simply seize Kuwait without repercussions three years later.
I suppose one could argue that Hugo Chavez doesn't pose the same threat as the Soviets, Red Chinese or Iraq at the peak of its military power.
To which I'd counter with, "then why the f*ck are you bothering me with this Chavez handshake crap?"
And even if we were to agree on Chavez, then I'd expect you to agree that similar Republican meetings and handshakes with dozens of tinhorn dictators and would-be "freedom fighters" -- paragons of humanity like Augusto Pinochet, Yassir Arafat, Mobutu Sese Seko, Dr. Jonas Savimbi, Anastasio Somoza and "Baby Doc" Duvalier -- were just as indefensible.