Mon-4009 (Sept. 18, 2009)
The Noriegaization of Hugo Chávez
By Carlos Alberto Montaner*
(FIRMAS PRESS. Madrid) The reaction of the American establishment against Hugo Chávez has begun. And it was about time. For almost 11 years, that gentleman has been misbehaving round the globe.
The starter's pistol was fired on Sept. 8 by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, perhaps the United States' most powerful prosecutor. Almost 90 years old and about to retire, though perfectly lucid, Morgenthau chose as his stage the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think tank close to the Democratic Party, so that his revelations could not be ignored by the White House and Congress, the two powers that are responsible for national security.
What did he say? He spoke about the links between Venezuela and Iran and the development of nuclear weapons by the two countries for the purpose of threatening the United States, as happened in Cuba in 1962 during the Missile Crisis. He told how the Venezuelan banking system has become a wash basin for narcodollars and a detour for Iran to evade the restrictions imposed by Washington on Iran's financial transactions. He pointed to Hugo Chávez's links with Hezbollah and Hamas, two frightful Islamic terrorist organizations, and the Colombian FARC. In sum, he said many things, all of them terrible.
The consequences of Morgenthau's talk were immediate. The United States' three major national newspapers – The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal – published articles and editorial in perfect tune with the prosecutor's words. Television, the usual pundits, and the most influential blogs echoed those words. There is no longer a single intellectually solvent person within the structure of power in the United States who won't admit that Venezuela, hand in hand with Iran and the Islamic terrorists and aided by its partners (Libya, Syria, Sudan, the Colombian FARC), has become a very serious danger to American security and tranquillity.
Simply put, Chávez is a tenacious enemy, intent on harming Americans in all possible world stages. Which is quite an irony, when you consider that the United States buys from Venezuela 80 percent of the crude oil that country exports.
To Morgenthau's list of indictments can be added three other, bigger infamies: Chávez has mounted an intrigue with the French government, maneuvering economic interests, pressing President Sarkozy to extradite to Venezuela the terrorist Carlos Ilich Ramírez, “the Jackal,” who is kept in a French prison for his innumerable assassinations.
At the same time, he attempts to free terrorist Ahmad Vahidi, Iran's Defense Minister, from the arrest warrant pending over him for his purported participation in the bombing of the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, a slaughter that killed 85 people and left 300 wounded.
Finally, the Venezuelan opposition has denounced that the alleged Iranian bicycle factory in the state of Cojedes is, in fact, a center for the formation of terrorists, where members of the Colombian FARC familiarize themselves with explosives similar to the ones used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Chávez is becoming the 21st-Century Noriega. Manuel Antonio Noriega, a former collaborator with the CIA, was a Panamanian narcodictator who established strong ties with Cuba and Colombian drug traffickers. He leased his nations territory as an intermediate landing strip for the shipment of cocaine to the United States. And he used the banking system to launder dollars, while imprudently harassing and threatening the American servicemen who at the time occupied the bases in the Panama Canal Zone.
After much hesitation, and with an administration divided over the type of response the United States should give, President George H. W. Bush (Sr.) ordered an invasion. It began on Dec. 19, 1989, and by Dec. 20 it had ended successfully. The Latin American governments protested weakly; nobody wanted to side with a narcodictator who was totally discredited. A huge majority of Panamanians supported the action.
Will that old story repeat itself? It is unlikely that it will happen the same way – an invasion of Venezuela does not seem like an intelligent option now that Washington is considering a withdrawal from Iraq and maybe from Afghanistan – but it is probable that an important sector of the American government is already suggesting to President Obama that he should consider ways to dislodge from power that dangerous enemy of U.S. democracy before the tumor turns cancerous. For sure, Bush Sr. was not thrilled by the perspective of invading Panama. It was a very uncomfortable choice that became inevitable. [©FIRMAS PRESS]
*www.firmaspress.com | 
