Chavez About to Really Screw Himself?
By
Move_Zig
on March 4, 2008 at 09:55 am
18 Comments
The thorn-in-Americas-side Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez may soon be the mouse that pissed the cat off once too often. Chavez has mobilized his military and put them on the border with Columbia.
President Hugo Chávez yesterday placed Venezuela on a war footing, sending thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after its neighbour killed a top rebel leader inside Ecuadorean territory.
“Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the border with Colombia immediately - tank battalions,” Mr Chávez boomed on his weekly television programme, Aló Presidente. He also placed the Venezuelan Air Force on standby for action.
This is no small threat, having devoted a fair amount of the petro-bucks he has been exacting from the USA and other oil purchasers to obtain top-of-the-line military equipment like German Leopard II tanks and former Soviet Su-30 advanced jet fighters.
Chavez, like any Statist, gravitates to the ready-built dystopian system of Marxism because it facilitates his greed for total power and gives it an imprimatur of dignity (if such a thing can be said of Marxism) that he would not otherwise have.
Washington doesn’t like Chávez for other reasons. First he has had the temerity to invite Fidel Castro to Caracas. He also visited Libya, Iran and Iraq, all members, with Venezuela, of OPEC, through which he arranged for a substantial increase in the price of oil (the Americans were especially indignant over his visit to Saddam Hussein).
The US administration has recently expressed worry about Chávez’s democratic credentials. He became president in 1998 after he won 58 per cent of the popular vote. In 2000, under a new constitution, he won a higher percentage vote and his party won more than 80 per cent of the seats in a new congress and nobody has questioned the validity of those elections. While protesting its respect for democracy in Venezuela, there are suspicions that the US may have inspired three generals in the Venezuelan army to call for the resignation of Chávez.
VENEZUELA is probably the richest country in South America because of its oil - it is by far the most important source of oil for the US economy, yet it has managed to squander the riches it has brought in the last 40 years.
Chavez has spent a good deal of his tenure taunting the USA and doing what he can, short of war, to generally piss us off. But he has always stayed on just this side of the Line of Death.
That time may soon be over.
If Chavez attacks Columbia he may be giving the United States and her South American allies the excuse they have long been praying for. Much of South America are signatories of the RIO TREATY
(Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), signed Sept. 2, 1947, and originally ratified by all 21 American republics. Under the treaty, an armed attack or threat of aggression against a signatory nation, whether by a member nation or by some other power, will be considered an attack against all (see Pan-Americanism). The treaty provides that no member can use force without the unanimous consent of the other signatories, but that other measures against aggressors may be approved by a two-thirds majority. It differs from previous inter-American treaties in that it is a regional treaty within a larger international organization; it recognizes the higher authority of the Security Council of the United Nations.
It would be very interesting to see if Bush can or will use force to finally take Chavez out. After all, not so long ago, Bushs’ Dad took out a very similar character in Operation Just Cause.
Maybe they’ll call this one OPERATION JUST CAUSE - PART DEUX
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