Is this U.S. sabre rattling an attempt to squelch Latin Americas defence plans?

VHeadline commentarist Kenneth T. Tellis writes: Just a few weeks ago Venezuelan President Chavez and Brazil Lula De Silva were having talks on the formation of a South America Defence Organization to protect all of the nations in the area from aggression.

Thus instead of NATO there would be in place a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to take care of the defence needs of all of South America and the Caribbean.

Just last week, Fernando Lugo a former bishop of Paraguay won the Presidential Elections. Fernando Lugo a leftist at heart and is suspected of being under the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

That of course rang alarm bells in the U.S. ... they rushed to judgment and because he was a leftist held the view that it was not democratic, because he was not of the right-wing stripe that they consider democratic.

The fact that the election was free and democratic made no difference the western news media, both in the U.S. and Europe. But in their misguided view Fernando Lugo was a threat to democracy.

Does one remember that this same view was held when priests were elected in the Nicaraguan elections and the Sandinistas won some years back?

• The poor priests in Latin American have always been accused by the Catholic hierarchy of being followers of Liberation Theology and thus leftists.

No one has ever looked into the suffering of Latin America's poor and downtrodden masses as these Liberation Theologians who live among the poor in the barrios. How could those within the church who live in opulence know of the real suffering of the masses?

So men like Fernando Lugo are disliked by those who see them as a threat to their power and opulent life-style. Now we come to the recent provocation by the U.S. Navy.

Why did the U.S. Navy deliberately send its Aircraft Carrier the USS George Washington into Venezuela's territorial waters if not to provoke Venezuela?

This attempt at saber ratting is not going to scare the Latin American nations, because yesterday is long gone, and they are no longer afraid of the U.S. or its military might anymore. This is not the Gulf of Sidra, Libya, which the U.S. Navy provoked by illegally entering Libyan waters on August 19, 1981 and shooting then down two Libyan Sukhoi SU-22 Fitter jet fighters over Libyan Air Space in the process.

Today Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela are all in the process of forming a common defence force, which in time will be more than the U.S. can handle.

But for the present these countries should invite Russian and Chinese naval forces on friendly visits to their nations. These visits would put the U.S. in a weaker position in the area.

Chavez can then implement his plans to bury the U.S. in the 21st century.

Kenneth T. Tellis
kenttellis@rogers.com