He's right about one or two things tho.
1. this is the way most of the world views the US government (notice that Chavez seperates the govt. and the people in his speech).
2. the US is the new Imperial power in the world and people are getting very sick of being bullied and manipulated by the US, Europe, and multinational corporations (mostly from the US and Europe).
3. the UN's authority has been entirely eroded, and if the world is to move forward on issues like poverty, genocide and climate change, we need an international body acting with moral authority.
No doubt Chavez is a less than ideal figurehead, but he has seemingly become one of the iconic leaders of the third world. And the polarisation (are you with us or against us?) will continue to the detriment of all...
The sad thing is that many Americans, including lots of ST.com posters, could care less what the rest of the world thinks of America.
That's what money and power does to countries (and to people, for that matter).
I agree, but we need a world body to try to control the caos the World is in.
You said three
How sad state of current affairs we live in when diplomats applaud a Chavez speach?
Listening to Chavez's rant gave me a chill...prophetic justice is the next logical step.
Yeah, well, the Pelosi/Rangel statements have sent the moonbats over at DailyKos into a tailspin.
At the “progressive” left’s premier loony bin web site, they’re incredibly wound up about the anti-Chavez statements from Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel; the cognitive dissonance is reaching a crescendo.
I just tried to write Nancy Pelosi after I saw...
Chavez A “Thug,” Says Nancy Pelosi. Is Pelosi a troll?
Rangel and Pelosi Out Of Line.
Pelosi defends Bush against Chavez.
Head on over, hours of fun for the whole family!
Um, I would take offense to it no matter the political party of the president.LMAO @ the Neocons getting their panties in a wad when their God, Dubyah, gets called a name, after disparraging/slandering multiple heads of state himself. Get over it.
So are you laughing your ass off at Rangel, Pelosi, and the other Democrats who are expressing their outrage at his comments? Or are they 'neocons' now too?
This is how america should try to spread democracy, not with guns. US is the richest country in the world, it's time you started using that fact to your advantage. Or not and communism makes a comeback...
Have you seen the price tag on our foreign aid package every year? Both in real dollars and in percent of GNP we outspend every freakin' nation on the globe -- some of them (like Venezuela I would imagine) exponentially -- when it comes to spreading the wealth. That doesn't even account for the billions we've given as private citizens to organizations such as UNICEF and other global care groups.
I'm just guessing and would be interested in the facts but, I would imagine we send more in federal dollars, in the form of some type of foreign aid, to Venezuela than those Harlemites receive back in heating oil discounts.
Chavez comes here, makes an ass of himself, and gives away some token heating oil and all of a sudden that's how democracy is spread?
That's pretty idiotic.
Am I the only one who actually READ this BS?
This is the most illustrative example of how little regard a lot of conservatives have for the truth when smearing opponents.
Let's use some SMALL bit of common sense, and a little bit of logic here:
The headline reads "Harkin defends Venezuelan President's U-N speech..."
So reading this, you might expect Harkin to say something along the lines of "Chavez was right, and America is on the fascist-fast track to global domination".
What did he ACTUALLY say?
So, in a rush to smear a democrat, this conservative commentator would equate understanding of some Bush critics with agreement with his harshest critic."I can understand the frustration, ah, and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush's policies."
Does that mean that if a psychologist understands a child molester's mental illness, that psychologist agrees that children should be molested?
They have the same logical format.
"I understand X, therefore I agree with X."
Yet another example of how little truck with truth and logic conservative ideologues have. I find it genuinely a bit sociopathic and sickening. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me leery of many conservative ideas.Description of Straw Man [logical fallacy]
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and subs utes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not cons ute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Examples of Straw Man
Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000."
Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?"
Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it."
Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead."
Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."
"Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."
Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets:
Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy."
Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?"
Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
You are correct, however, that in real dollars, the US spends more than any other country.The U.S. is far and away the world’s largest donor of economic aid but dead last among 22 developed nations when measured as a percentage of GDP. At 0.13% of GDP, our country looks like a miser when compared with such countries as Denmark and Norway, or even with such other low GDP donors such Greece and Italy.
http://www.irc-online.org/content/co...0502stingy.php
Funny thing is that the largest portion (10%) goes to Israel, instead of actually helping the developing world.
The single richest nation on the planet, acts in it's own long-term detriment by placing a low value on helping others.
don't u know all the $$ in the world can't buy you friends. A good start for US would be to have a leader than can actually speak well and the rest of the world can relate to when he speaks of democracy.
Chavez > Bush when it comes to the world relating, understanding and agreeing to what he's talking about.
tell me, what part of Bush's speech, when he speaks to the world, is he trying to get countries to like democracy? the part where he says, either you're with us or against us?
Some of you here are such idiots if you believe Chavez is right and that he is better than Bush at diplomacy. This is the same guy who allows NO dissent whatsoever in his own country. He's passed laws outlawing any negative protests against him or his government and just recently he tracked down the employers of people who had signed a pe ion against him and pressured those employers to fire the people!
I heard a man yesterday on talk radio who was from Venezuela and he told how it really is. Hugo Chavez is considered a clown and a joke in his own country and the people no longer believe in his "social programs." Chavez is scared to death of losing power and is in the process of setting the stage to ensure he wins re-election by any means necessary.
The fact that the delegates would applaud this man shows how ethically, politically, and morally bankrupt most of the rest of the world is!
They hate America, and nothing we could say or do would change that fact. They hate us because we are the richest and most free country in the world and they really want to be us, but can't. Why do you think so many people are coming to this country, both legally and illegally? It's because they know they can have a higher quality of life and, if they work hard and obey the law, they can become financially successful. Heck, even the ones who are feeding at the welfare trough have a higher quality of life than they would in their home country!
America is the great evil, imperialist nation, yet who do they come to whenever there is a national disaster or the outbreak of war? Yep, that's right - then they're all too happy to accept the help of the evil empire! Where would France be without the US - probably speaking German! Where would Kuwait be without the US - part of Saddam's empire! We also helped overthrow Slobadan Milosivic and we hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. Many millions of people all around the world are better off because of the aid of the US - yet they villify us at every chance.
If we were to become an isolationist nation, they would still criticize us for not doing enough to help the rest of the world. We can't win - no matter what we do! They are really just jealous of America and the great wealth enjoyed by its citizens, so they tear us down so that they can feel bigger and better.
I say America should stand tall, throw back her shoulders, and continue doing what she is doing - leading the world!
There are many in the world who despise the U.S. and what you say is true, we are the greatest nation on the earth.
When I see delegates applauding Chavez and his comedy act, I see then doing so out of frustration with Bush and what he stands for. Some will hate us not matter what.
Even if we are the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, we do need allies and friends amongst the world's nations. It is in our national interest and security to work with the other nations of the world and treat them with respect rather than making demands and speaking with contempt for domestic political theater.
When we engage in pre-emptive wars and unleash messes as we have in Iraq it endears us to no one. We need to work with the leaders of the middle east now more than ever. There is an extremist element out there that wishes us harm and the more cooperation and intelligence we can get from others helps us isolate and destroy that enemy.
Bush foreign policy: wreckless
Bush Iraq campaign: incompetence
But hey, we haven't been hit on our soil in 5 years cause we're fightin' them over there instead of over here. Tell that to our allies the Brits. And what will the wingnuts say when some s bag jihadists gets lucky and does successfully do something on our soil again?
The talking point of 5 years without an attack is based on a period of time.
The last time I checked, the bar has been set at 8 years since a terrorist attack.
WTC 1993-WTC 2001
Just for the record, so all are 100% clear:
I think Chavez is slightly insane, and at the very least a bit sociopathic.
I thought the speech was over the top, and undiplomatic.
I am no big fan of Bush, and I am embarrassed at some of the things that are done in my name as an American, but that does NOT mean I think what a nutjob like Chavez says has any validity.
That said,
I would simply point to the fact that Bush's actions in the foreign policy arena tend to give asshats like Chavez ammunition. Any president would likely do so as the anti-US crowd would hate us regardless, but Bush seems to be especially ham-handed when it comes to diplomacy.
History shows that nations will gang together to tie down great powers, lest they drowned out by the behemoth.
For decades, the United States had been the exception to that rule. Part of that was because of the Cold War. Part of it was because the U.S. went out of its way to show the rest of the world it had nothing to fear.
All past administrations, Republican and Democrat, have been deferential, almost to the point of excess, to the weaker powers. This administration was the first to eschew all that and say right up front that American power should be used just to serve American interests.
Much of the world, including even Old Europe, for all their smugness and ing and moaning, ultimately looked to the United States to be the vanguard of Western ideals, to be a moral leader not because it was easy or efficacious, but because the American people believed they were exceptional, and strove to set a higher standard.
The U.S. is so powerful that the decisions it makes affect the lives of the majority of the world's populations. When the U.S. starts making clear it that it alone is going to decide the fate of all those people, it seems natural that people are going to start to band together and resist. They were willing to live under American exceptionalism, but they will resist American triumphalism.
Even as powerful as the U.S. is, if all the peoples of the world band together to curtail American power, they will succeed. Our past leaders had the insight to understand how special it was to be a global superpower, and yet have so much of the world be content with it, and not offer up that much resistance. This Administration has been the first since WW2 to take American power for granted.
(This is one reason why issues like redefining torture can cripple us. Let's say hypothetically torture has some benefit in extracting information out of Islamic terrorists. The tradeoff is that the rest of the world sees that Americans are no longer going to concern themselves with being exceptional, that they are going to act like any other nation does, and thus no longer can be trusted with the power they wield. So the world will start working together to constrain that power.)
This is why the United States currently is weaker than it has been at any time since WW2 ended, at a time in history when that power really could come in handy. We still have our economic might, and a significant fraction of the military might we enjoyed six years ago. But our ability to lead and to persuade the rest of the world has been eviscerated.
There has always been resentment and envy around the world for the position America finds itself in. Decades ago, European leaders would come to the U.S. and talk nice to the Presidents and do all the friendly photo-ops, then go back to Europe and tell their own media what a dope the U.S. President is.
But while there always has been resentment, there has not been a will to gang up on the U.S. But now the genie is out of the bottle. Bush himself has been much more interested in the agendas of allies and potential allies in his second term, and it has borne some fruit. But the damage of his first term has been done, and the nations of the world understand that even when Bush leaves office, there is still a good chance somebody similarly indifferent to the rest of the world, and willing to press American power for America's benefit, everybody else be damned, can get into power here.
The response to Chavez and Ahmadinejad in that light was not so much endorsement of their ideas, so many of which are insane, as it was an outlet for the resentment and disillusionment a lot of nations feel over the events I describe.
You forget 1995 and John Doe #2. (hey, we all have our conspiracy theories)
RandomGuy, a straw man fallacy/argument is by no means restricted to the republicans - it's a tool used by pretty much every politician who ever breathed. alluding that it is a conservative strategy alone is ludicrous.
kudos - nice post.
John Doe #2= conspiracy theory? I'll agree with that.
agreed there.Just for the record, so all are 100% clear:
I think Chavez is slightly insane, and at the very least a bit sociopathic.
I thought the speech was over the top, and undiplomatic.
I am no big fan of Bush, and I am embarrassed at some of the things that are done in my name as an American, but that does NOT mean I think what a nutjob like Chavez says has any validity.
That said,
I would simply point to the fact that Bush's actions in the foreign policy arena tend to give asshats like Chavez ammunition. Any president would likely do so as the anti-US crowd would hate us regardless, but Bush seems to be especially ham-handed when it comes to diplomacy.
Good Post ES.
Nations do things because it is in their interest to do them. Nations can't be "friends" with other nations and how the people of other nations view each other is due largely to the views that are put forth by those they respect.
People hate the U.S. and people love the U.S. but don't think that the U.S. or, even those countries called home by these U.S.-haters and U.S.-lovers care one whit about their nations popularity in the world
The only thing a nation should care about is whether or not its interests are being served, protected, and maintained. To the extent these interests intersect with those of other countries, we form alliances and treaties and partnerships. To the extent these interests differ with other countries' interests we disagree, we use diplomacy to change their policy, or we go to war.
Geopolitics isn't a popularity contest.
As opposed to reckless. Maybe his insurance rates will go down.
I won't edit my grammatical error. God knows I would probably have misspelled potato too when asked.
Well I guess we have been hit since 9/11 if you want to count the Anthrax scare that followed.
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