EMINENTOES: ¡Muy Peligroso!
Babbin, Jed
"EMINENTOES" JED BABBIN Muy Peligroso! Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is a Fidel Castro on steroids. So why isn't the U.S. paying more attention to this oily creature? IL IS THE...
...He knows what will happen to those rifles...
...Businessman Pedro Carmona was installed as president and Chavez's resignation announced...
...In the decade or more that it will take Chavez to embed his revolution in its military and economy, he is vulnerable...
...Rumsfeld began last spring—is to revitalize our relationships with Chavez's neighbors and the democracies of Central and South America...
...Chavez maybe misjudging us...
...But Chavez apparently believes oil makes him as immune to intervention as it has made Saudi Arabia...
...And what can we do about it...
...Kemp didn't succeed...
...Some will be used to arm Venezuelan troops and some will be passed to Chavez's revolutionary friends, such as those in the FARC...
...In January 2005, Chavez said that "the most negative force in the world today is the government of the United States...
...There was a brief outcry at several reports that Spain had sold "chemical warfare" agents and radioactive materials to Venezuela in 2004...
...IL IS THE GREAT CORRUPTER OF NATIONS...
...Venezuela is America's third largest supplier, selling us about 15-18 percent of our annual imports...
...On April 12, 2002, Chavez's troops fired on a crowd of some 200,000 demonstrators, killing about a dozen and wounding many more...
...This past spring Chavez cut off shipments of oil to Colombia...
...But Chavez is no fool...
...Since December 1998, when he was first elected president, Chavez has been an outspoken adversary of the United States...
...Chavez is also a serious student of American politics...
...Jed Babbin, an American Spectator contributing editor...
...Chavez was elected in 1998 in an apparently free election, was briefly removed from power in a coup in April 2002, and survived a recall vote in 2004...
...Chavez is on cozy terms with the FARC narcoterrorists of Colombia...
...I am convinced that if for some reason this attempt to forge a revolution without arms fails, what would come next would be a revolution with arms because that is the only way out that we Venezuelans have," he has said...
...To arm them, he has turned to Russia and Old Europe...
...There are only two things we need to know about Telesur...
...The Venezuelan economy actually shrank by more than 10 percent in 2003, having shrunk by almost that margin in 2002...
...Meanwhile, because we buy about 60 percent of Venezuela's oil production, Chavez is allying himself with oil customers—notably China and India—to replace the American market if he decides to close it...
...The 1973 oil embargo proved a potent weapon in the hands of Middle Eastern despots against America...
...Venezuela's oil revenues go to feed Chavez's appetite for regional power...
...It was only after the 9/11 attacks that the oil immunity the despots have enjoyed began to diminish but many, such as Saudi Arabia's terrorist-funding tyranny, remain able to shrug off pressure to take significant action to break ties to terror...
...Thus the dictator's democracy credentials were renewed so he could redouble his efforts to deny freedom, both personal and economic, to Venezuelans...
...That's why he has retained a high-powered lobbying team, the Patton Boggs firm, paying according to one report at least $1 million a year to coax Congress his way...
...We need to continue building such alliances, including military training and cooperation, with Chavez's vulnerable neighbors...
...Believing—so far correctly—that oil immunizes him from American 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2005action, Chavez is arming his military to carry out his dreams and even building a South American version of Al-Jazeera to spread his propaganda...
...Asked about that in a March 2005 press conference with Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was concerned about the Venezuelan arms buy...
...Three decades later, it is an even more powerful weapon because we have both increased our consumption and done nothing to reduce our vulnerability to embargoes or politically driven price hikes...
...He went on to say that "U.S...
...One, its president is Andres Izarra, Chavez's former information minister...
...Civilians can no longer own guns in Venezuela...
...Despite Venezuela's oil wealth—at about 64 billion barrels, its supply is roughly a quarter of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves—80 percent of the Venezuelan population remains in poverty...
...In November 2004, Chavez's National Assembly passed the "Law on the Responsibility of Radio and Television," which allows Chavez's regime to fine or shut down television and newspapers that oppose him...
...Truthfully, there isn't sufficient reason or need to take such action...
...I can't imagine why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s...
...Far clearer is Spain's sale of oceangoing warships—corvettes and frigates—to Venezuela, as well as coastal patrol boats...
...What the radioactive materials are remains unclear...
...B°RN ON JULY 28, 1954, Chavez is the son of two schoolteachers, a 1975 engineering graduate of the Venezuelan military academy, and a redbereted paratrooper whose initial service was against guerrilla revolutionaries...
...ambassador, no less—to try to talk the Journal out of criticizing Chavez for his dictatorial behavior...
...THE DEATH RATTLE OF VENEZUELAN democracy was heard after the abortive attempt to pass a recall measure against Chavez in August 2004...
...Two, Telesur is now negotiating a "strategic alliance"with Qatar's Al-Jazeera...
...He wanted to be Hugo Chavez Frias...
...In late July, Chavez launched "Telesur," a television channel now broadcast throughout South America as an "alternative" to U.S...
...it doesn't happen...
...When Rumsfeld visited Argentina and Brazil, he began the process of surrounding and containing Chavez so as to give the Venezuelan people time to gather together to throw him out...
...Mr...
...Chavez's political forces—he's packed the legislature and courts with his cronies—first discounted thou-sands of signatures on the recall petition and then rigged voting machines to ensure the right result...
...That fact has not escaped the attention of a South American strong-man who is using his control of oil against us and his neighbors...
...That brought the Venezuelan military in, and it drove Chavez out...
...In March 2005, Chavez's anti-Americanism led him to stand next to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and proclaim that Iran had a right to its rogue nuclear program...
...imperialism is not invincible...
...According to the CIA World Fact Book, Venezuelan industrial production fell by over 15 percent in 2003...
...He also cut off electricity to two Colombian provinces when the Bogota government sent bounty hunters after Rodrigo Granda (FARC's "foreign minister") who was living under Chavez's protection near Caracas...
...Those in the military, the church, the unions, and the business community can still send him on a one-way trip to Havana...
...We should be helping them in every way we can...
...In 2001, the Economist observed, "President Hugo Chavez was made on television...
...media...
...Further demonstrating his displeasure, Chavez closed Venezuelan ports to Colombian coal exports...
...In April, Chavez announced a new "loyal re-serve" force that he wants to be two-million-soldiers strong and under his personal command...
...Colombia is the fifth-largest coal exporter in the world...
...Venezuela's democracy may be dormant, not dead...
...He knows that, historically, America has intervened whenever Central or South American problems arose...
...Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp, whose "Free Market Petroleum" company has negotiated a contract with Chavez's government, once showed up at the Wall StreetJournal—in the company of Chavez's U.S...
...To Chavez, our reliance on his oil means we won't interfere in his military plans for South and Central America...
...In this he is mistaken, because Venezuela is not Saudi Arabia and Hugo Chavez's roots don't go as deep as the oil wells' drill...
...is also author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004...
...Chavez is arming as heavily and quickly as he can...
...But for what...
...And oil is the great immunizer...
...He said, "I can't imagine what's going to happen to 100,000 AK-47s...
...Theywon't act to stop Venezuelan sponsorship of terrorist forces throughout Central and South America...
...Chavez is acting like an OPEC version of Leonid Brezhnev, propping up Castro and working hard to spread the old Cuban's perpetual "revolution" throughout Central and South America...
...The more we stand with these nations, the less Chavez will be able to destabilize our backyard, and the sooner he will disappear from the international stage...
...Chavez announced that his government is buying 100,000 AK-47 rifles from Russia...
...The Sandinista revival in Nicaragua, FARC in Colombia, and a host of other Marxist-terrorist-Cuban interventions will be better armed and funded by Chavez...
...What we can do—and what Mr...
...While our attention is split between the war against terrorism and the celebrity trial du jour, we are ignoring the most dangerous despot in our hemisphere...
...Like you, we are willing to be free from imperialism...
...Russia is selling it attack helicopters...
...As much as they may wish to resist, Venezuela's neighbors lack the means...
...It took the Uribe government of Colombia less than a week to buckle under to Chavez...
...In a February 2004 speech, Chavez warned President Bush to "back off" from Venezuela's internal affairs, saying that Bush had plotted invasions and genocides...
...According to the Heritage Foundation's 2004 "Index of Economic Freedom," Chavez "has succeeded in strangling the source of much of his op-position," i.e., the free market business community...
...The Venezuelan comandante doesn't have to stand, cap in hand, begging for handouts from an Evil Empire with an empty checkbook because his government owns Venezuela's oil, the world's fourth largest oil sup-ply...
...Chavez has made it clear that his pride at being elected democratically won't stop him from seizing power if voters try to turn him out...
...But though Kemp failed, Chavez will try and try again to buy favorable opinion here and in Europe...
...For all his bluster, he won't risk the provocation of a sudden cutoff unless he knows we won't respond with military action...
...It was an opportunity lost that will not easily come again...
...Chavez rightly sees energy—oil, coal, and electricity—as an enormously powerful weapon, and he's unhesitating in his use of it...
...SEPTEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57 E M I N E N T O E S 100 MANY "EXPERTS" AND "ANALYSTS"—not to mention Foggy Bottom—insist that we should turn a deaf ear when Chavez launches into his anti-American demagoguery...
...It rates the Venezuelan economy as "repressed" be-cause of high barriers to capital flow and foreign in-vestment, restrictions on banking and finance, and government control of wages and prices...
...A few mutual defense treaties would circumscribe Chavez's power...
...Those whose misfortune it is to live on top of the great oil reserves are destined to be kakistocrats, or to live under their rule...
...There is no thought of—or appetite for—American military action against Chavez...
...Chavez has threatened to cut off oil sales to the US., saying he would "use oil" as a weapon against us...
...While he's stifling freedom of the press at home, Chavez is ambitiously seeking media access to all of South America...
...Muddled by a mix of fear and condescension, they don't think we should be crowding him—when that's exactly what we should be doing...
...Regional leaders wouldn't recognize the Carmona government, and the Bush White House—after calling for new elections—backed off and failed to support Carmona...
...Indeed, Chavez is working hard to make sure it can't, both in Venezuela and in Washington...
...Jimmy Carter was there to bless the corrupt vote, and the European Union—seeking more oil—was quick to chime in on Chavez's side...
...Compared to Telesur, Gunga Dan Rather was fair and balanced...
...Chavez controls the majority of votes in the Organization of American States, and none of his neighbors dare risk open opposition to him...
...We now know who Fidel Castro wanted to be when he grew up...
...Democracies' dependence on oil makes them hesitant to act against these regimes...
...This empowers him to buy and build the tools of repression, subversion, and conquest...
...I can't imagine that if it did happen, that it would be good for the hemisphere...
...He has been the leader of one unsuccessful coup, an intended beneficiary of another, and the near-victim of a third...
...Iran, confronted by the United States, has our solidarity," he told Khatami...
...It's unlikely that Chavez is going to conduct an 58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2005 outright invasion of his neighbors, but his growing military is clearly meant to intimidate them...
...A sudden cutoff of Venezuelan oil would have a devastating effect on the American economy...
...What brought about the coup was growing discontent with Chavez's anti-democracy measures, anti-church rhetoric, and strangulation of the economy that had led to massive protests and a general strike...
...I just hope that...
...E M I N E N T O E S J E D B A B B I N iMuy Peligroso...
...Then the coup fell apart...
...By April 14, Chavez was back in power...
...But the chemical weapons appear to have been no more than non-lethal tear gas agents...
...Rumsfeld was being far too diplomatic...
...He understands the J E D B A B B I N media: on his own weekly six-hour television show, "Hello, President," he doesn't only talk—he sings...
...Even if he can't assemble the two-million-man force (which seems likely in the near future), he can blackmail his neighbors into silence and inaction...
Vol. 38 • September 2005 • No. 7
