Otto Reich, writing about Qaddafi, Chávez, & Co.
The Obama administration will suffer from a crisis of credibility until it stands up to the tyrants in our own hemisphere.
It is good that dictators in the Middle East are at long last being overthrown, and that President Obama has finally called on Qaddafi to step down. The administration must explain, however, why it does not say the same about Castro and Chávez, or why Cubans and Venezuelans who have been tirelessly protesting against their dictators for years receive no support from the administration. Why do we see instead that the Cuban government receives financial incentives from the United States? Why do Bolivia’s Morales and Nicaragua’s Ortega — both Qaddafi Prize winners and Castro-Chávez allies — receive no pushback in their relentless efforts at subjugating their people? It is easy to see why some Americans have concluded that the Obama administration is more interested in appeasing its political base than in replacing anti-American dictators.
And, by the way,
The malign influence of Chávez can be measured by the more than $10 million a day in oil money that he gives Cuba, almost equal to the $5 billion a year by which the Soviets kept the Castro brothers afloat for over 30 years.
That doesn’t include Chavez’s alliances with the Russians and the Iranians, either.
UPDATE
Via Theo Spark, Bill Whittle on Obama’s friends and enemies,
