Chris Herz: More Rightward Movement in the USA

VHeadline commentarist Chris Herz writes: No one in Venezuela or elsewhere should be tricked for one moment into believing that the next government here in the imperial capital will be any better a negotiating partner than the present regime of George W. Bush.

The presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has made clear to her own party that should she not become their presidential candidate that the voters should cross over to the Republican conservatives and cast their ballot for Senator John McCain, who pledges 100 years of war.

This has driven her intra-party opponent, Senator Barak Obama further to the right as well.

• Both Democrats will now compete to show corporate America that they will be just as aggressively belligerent as any Republican. Whether 3 o'clock in the morning, or 3 o'clock in the afternoon it does not matter. The bombing raids and other military assaults will be still "on the table."

But any other possibility simply does not exist, and never did.

There is no element within our national ownership which is even for one moment willing to consider the absurd notion that the resources of a nation like Venezuela might actually belong to such a country's own population.

All that is happening is that the Democrats are discovering that Mr Bush and all of our other presidents in the last several decades have already bet the family farm on being able to continue on the imperial path.

None of these politicians are prepared to get stuck with the task of telling the US population that they must, like all other nations resign themselves to living within their own means.

And even more dangerously most of the politically and economically savvy elements of this population at least dimly sense that this is the case and they will support these politicians. The alternatives were decisively rejected way back in Nixon's or in Reagan's times. It is this writer's contention, and he sees no reason to alter his opinion that the Iraq occupation would have secured Republican, conservative government here for another generation -- had the Iraqis not chosen to fight for their country.

Even rather liberal news media, even Internet media such as The Huffington Post are apparently wedded firmly to the portrayal of Hugo Chavez Frias as a buffonish, clown of a dictator: A caudillo in the classic Latin American mold.

Mrs Clinton has had no heartburn at all in echoing the Bush line on the recent contretemps between Colombia on the one hand and Ecuador and Venezuela on the other. Somehow this is all President Chavez' fault. And implicit within her comments is that when the day comes when we can get some CIA and Marines loose from the middle-eastern quagmire we will deal with him.

Then the FARC-EP will fold and Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, perhaps even Cuba, can be brought back to their proper relationship with the USA -- our hewers of wood and drawers of water. And after that, on to Brazil, Argentina and Chile whose disobedience is not so great as the other countries in the tier of Latin America, but which are still not everything we feel entitled to expect.

The only thing Venezuela has going for her is that the US leadership and those who will vote for them still see the Persian Gulf as both a more valuable prize and one which with just a little more effort might yet be an attainable one.

"The morning will come when the world is mine,
Tomorrow belongs to me!"

Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com