9-18-05, 9:16 am
In a patronizingly racist and pro-imperialist article this past week in the Los Angeles Times ('Frustrated U.S. Finds Few Willing to Join Anti-Chavez Coalition'), authors Chris Kraul and Paul Richter echoed the Bush administration’s fabricated conundrum of 'what to do with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez?'
Kraul and Richter exhibited neither objectivity nor any knowledge of the social context of the Chávez administration and accepted the Bush administration’s unfounded claim to a right of intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela. While Kraul and Richter accept this claim, their particular twist was that the unpopular Bush administration is finding little support for its anti-Chávez goals in Latin America.
The right of U.S. intervention in Latin America, a belief shared by Kraul and Richter with the Bush administration, has a long history. It originated in the 19th century with the Monroe Doctrine and was fueled by a belief in racial superiority and the tyrannical belief that U.S. economic and military interests override the national sovereignty of Latin American countries. It continues to be justified by racism and a general disregard for international law.
To give credence to this belief and to their anti-Chávez views, Kraul and Richter pepper politically biased quotes from anti-Chávez State Department officials and academics. For instance, Kraul and Richeter quote university professor Javier Corrales, simply identified as a 'Venezuela expert,' as attributing cynical and demagogic motives to Chávez's criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.
A cursory glance at Corrales' web page shows that he is ideologically predisposed to disliking Chávez and the process of social reforms his movement has initiated in Venezuela. Thus, while Corrales may have a lot knowledge about Venezuela, and in that sense he is an 'expert,' Kraul and Richter fail to reveal his political biases and present Corrales' opinion as objective. In this rather obvious disregard for one of the basic principles of journalism, Kraul and Richter assume a political bias as fact and in the process distort the truth about Chávez. Why didn’t they interview 'Venezuela expert' Eva Bolinger, a Venezuelan-American attorney whose book, The Chávez Code, examines U.S. government documents that reveal the Bush administration’s role in the April 2002 coup against Chávez.
Interestingly, Kraul and Richter’s biased maneuver aligns them with the Monroe Doctrine foreign policy logic legitimized by blatantly racist and distorted North American media images that create impressions of Latin American leaders as 'strongmen' and their countries as childish and incapable of determining their own futures. Meanwhile, Kraul and Richter ignore a long history of U.S. interventions that were initiated to destabilize, thwart democratic elections, and impose U.S. hegemony.
When Kraul and Richter do allude to the fact that Chávez has been elected by large majorities and that his policies have received resounding approval by the majority of Venezuelans over and over again, they imply that Venezuelan interests aren’t as legitimate as unpopular Bush administration goals for Latin American.
Kraul and Richter completely ignore the fact that the U.S. government helped fund the April 2002 coup and continues to give millions of dollars to anti-Chávez groups (a policy that Kraul and Richter would hypocritically view in a different light if Chávez were to give money to an anti-Bush group). Dishonestly, Kraul and Richter dismiss the reality of Venezuelan democracy and imply that its elected leader is 'authoritarian.'
This remarkable and unsubstantiated position is an embarrassment for the Los Angeles Times.
The truth about Hugo Chávez is that indeed he is critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy. He, like 60 percent of Americans and most of the world, disapproves of Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. He rejects, again like the majority of people in the U.S. and in the Western Hemisphere, the 'free trade' doctrine of the Bush administration, He disapproves of the U.S. government’s intervention in Colombia. Chávez correctly regards 'Plan Colombia' as a means for building a large U.S. military presence in Latin America under the guise of fighting the so-called drug war.
Chávez has used Venezuela’s oil industry to both start the process of reform in Venezuela (build public schools, a universal health care system, create jobs, stimulate local agricultural production – all things that tens of millions of Americans crave) and to build stronger economic ties with countries other than just the U.S.
To answer Kraul and Richter: The Bush administration's anti-Chávez views are in the minority in Latin America because Chávez represents a way for Latin American countries to reduce their dependence on the U.S. thereby reducing U.S. control. Confused by this trend, Kraul and Richter simply don't understand why other countries might try to increase their independence.
The question of U.S. regional domiance really has the Bush administration in a snarl, because it wants exclusive access to Venezuela’s oil resources. Again, racist and nationalist notions of superiority are strong motives behind Bush’s oil policy. As with Iraq, Bush oil policy starts from the premise that 'our oil' is under their land, and they have no right to keep ChevronTexaco, Halliburton, or ExxonMobil from it.
Of course Venezuela has every right, just like any other country, to make business and trade arrangement with whom it wants. It has the right to use the benefits from those arrangements in whatever manner it sees fit inside its country. These are basic tenets of international law. It’s a basic issue of sovereignty.
On the question of democracy, it is very fine for the administration and its media mouthpieces to use the word 'democracy' demagogically to vilify a foreign government when the question of stolen elections here persists and the fact of U.S. democracy has never been more in doubt.
Can the administration make accusations about democracy in other countries without hypocrisy when, as a recent story on this website shows, the Bush administration essentially bribed thousands of residents in Miami-Dade Country, Florida last summer with tens of millions of dollars to convince them to vote for him in the 2004 election? How about stolen votes in Ohio?
Did Bush’s tactic of paying several media personalities (e.g. Armstrong Williams) to promote his policies improve U.S. democracy? How about paying media outlets to publish or televise Bush administration propaganda as 'news'? How about planting phony pro-Bush reporters in the White House press corps? Aren’t these things, in fact, part of an effort to undermine the independence of the media?
And some might call packing the federal courts with ideologically right-wing activist judges who openly endorse Bush policies and ideological values an attempt to undermine the independence of the judiciary.
But fine, let’s assume corruption, bribery, pork barrel spending, vote theft, gerrymandering, media manipulation, and so on in the U.S. isn’t the real issue here. The fact is simple: Chávez won two presidential elections, a recall referendum, and his reform program has repeatedly been supported by large majorities (higher than either of Bush’s electoral 'victories'). On top of that, after the U.S.-funded coup in 2002, an outpouring of massive popular support in the streets swept him back into power and sent the coup plotters into exile.
On the question of Chávez versus his political opposition. There have been no mass arrests. No mass roundups. No secret military tribunals and prison camps. No effort to squash civil rights or liberties. No PATRIOT Act. Right-wing opponents of Chávez in the U.S. government and their mouthpieces in the media have distorted the Venezuelan government’s legitimate right to prosecute coup plotters and other criminal activity related to attempts to overthrow the government.
Any government has the right to investigate and bring out into the light those who are planning its violent overthrow. If some generals in the U.S. Army, for example, decided they wanted to overthrow Bush and accepted money from, say, Great Britain to do so, wouldn't the administration have the right to expose them, arrest them, try them, and imprison them?
And if political organizations close to the generals continued to receive money from the same sources to carry on anti-government activities, wouldn't the administration be right to be suspicious of them, to monitor them, and try to block this funding? Wouldn't the administration have the right to view Great Britain with great suspicion as well?
And if FoxNews, for example, actively aided the generals in their attempt to oust Bush by going beyond its protected right to distribute information to the point of using its resources to foster coup conditions and to legitimize a crime, wouldn't the government have the right to create alternative media sources that try to give a true picture of the administration's policies?
And if the courts and prosecutors, because of political biases, refused to bring the coup plotters to trial, wouldn't the administration have the right to protect the Constitution by impeaching them and appointing court officials who would uphold the law?
These are the reasonable and legal steps taken by the government of Venezuela. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan government’s legitimate interests don’t mesh well with the Bush administration’s goals, so Kraul and Richter distort Venezuela’s actions in response to the coup and characterize them, without evidence or substantiation, as 'becoming increasingly authoritarian and undermining its political opponents, the media, and judiciary.'
Apparently, democracy in Venezuela and honest journalism mean less to Kraul and Richter than toeing the Bush administration’s anti-Chávez line. What happened to the independent media in the U.S.?
--Contact Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
