Well, that didn't take long

Burn the witch!

The motto of the Cheney-Bush administration often seems to be, "Allies? We don't need no stinkin' allies!!

That came to mind when I saw the following story. On Monday, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was inagurated President of Argentina. Before the week was out, the ubiquitous anonymous administration officials were trying to discredit her by linking her and her political part to dirty business with the current second-favorite Latin American bogeyman for the US, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela: Argentine Leader Slams U.S. Allegations by Monte Reel and Juan Forero Washington Post 12/14/07; Un fiscal de EE UU dice que Chávez financió la campaña de Kirchner por Alejandro Rebossio El País(Spain) 14.12.2007; La prensa mundial reflejó la réplica de Cristina a EE.UU. La Nación 14.12.2007; Argentine Leader Faults U.S. on Inquiry by Alexei Barrionuevo New York Times 12/14/07; text of indictment in US v. Moises Maionica, et al.

Unlike Chávez is sometimes inclined to do, Fernández responded diplomatically, with no references to Bush as El Diablo or to the smell of sulfur. What she said was, without mentioning the US, "Hay ciertos personajes que parecen salidos de ficciones que montan operaciones basura. Países que más que países amigos quieren países empleados. Es su forma de operar en la política regional, pero no va a tener respuesta. Voy a seguir afirmando la relación con todos los países de la región y también nuestra relación con Venezuela". Which is diplomatic Spanish for, "Bite me."

After being sworn in, Fernández held meetings with foreign leaders including Chávez, Spanish Prince Felipe de Asturias, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In her meeting with Chávez and presumably also with Uribe, she stressed to them her concern about getting former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt released from captivity by the Colombian FARC guerrilla force. Betancourt has been held in captivity for the past six years.

Argentina is not in any rational perception of the real world anti-American. Why those anonymous officials in the Cheney-Bush adminstration would be trying to alienate the incoming administration in Argentina, I don't know. But after seven years of this crowd in office, does it even make sense to ask about the reason? Do they need a reason? Just the suggestion that Argentina might be pushing, for instance, to ease tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, or to help Colombian find some peaceful solution to the intractable guerrilla war there, is probably enough for Dick Cheney to want to trash the Fernández administration. She also favors granting Venezuela full membership in the Mercosur trade bloc of Latin American nations.

Chancellor Reinaldo Gargano of Uruguay, a country with which Argentina has had rather touchy relations recently, was surprisingly supportive of Fernández. He said that some people (obviously referring to the Cheney-Bush administration) were uncomfortable with the improved relations that Argentina and other Latin American countries are pursuing with Venezuela. A senior Uruguan official said that the incident should be viewed as "una especie de esquema armado, destinado a deteriorar la imagen de la presidenta de la República Argentina" (a type of hostile scheme intended to damage the image of the President of the Republic of Argentina). Not to put too much weight on it, but "esquema armado" could be more literally translated as "armed scheme". I don't know what particular nuances attach to the phrase in Spanish diplomatic language. But I'm guessing it is meant to hint that something more elaborate than a single smuggling bust is involved.

For the Cheney-Bush administration, which actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez and encouraged another attempt, having Venezuela incorporated more and more into peaceful, active cooperation with its neighbors is a bad thing. It might reduce the possibilities for war and/or the reversal of Chávez "Bolivarian revolution".

But one of Fernández' priorities is to prosecute the chief perpetrators of the military junta that ruled Argentina in the later 70's and early 80's and carried out a brutal campaign of suppression known as the "dirty war", which she referred to in her inaguaral address as "the greatest genocide in our history". Maybe Cheney and some other officials thought that they could take refuge in Argentina after they left office and avoid being charged with domestic and international criminal violations over the Iraq War, the torture policy and other things.

Certainly, if any of them were paying attention to her inagural address to the Argentine Legislative Assembly on Monday, they might have been shocked at some of the (to Cheney) radical ideas she expressed. For instance, her insistance that in prosecuting perpetrators of crimes on behalf of the junta's rule, that the defendents be insured "all the rights and guarantees that other Argentines did not have" during the junta's own rule. An exotic concept indeed for the Cheney-Bush administration.

She even talked about combatting terrorism and used the phrase "human rights" when talking about it! More and more suspicious. She claims that respecting the human rights of accused terrorists is an important factor in the struggle against terrorism. Obviously, she hasn't heard of the ticking-nuclear-bomb scenario that justifies anything and everything in the civilize American way of doing things under Cheney and Bush. And she apparently has the notion that human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, as some dang revolutionary or the other said one time. Pretty wild and crazy, if you ask me.

This also sounds kind of un-Cheney-like:

Finalmente, queremos en este mundo global también fijar nuestra posición en cuanto a una necesidad imperiosa, la reconstrucción del multilateralismo. Un mundo unilateral es un mundo más inseguro, más injusto.

[Finally, in this globalized world, we also want to focus on our position in regard to an imperative necessity, the reconstruction of multilateralism. A unilateral world is a world more insecure, more unjust.]

That sounds suspiciously like she's actually trying to insult our Dear Leader Bush, Liberator of Peoples and Scourge of the Heathen, and his faithful servant Dark Lord Cheney. So if Cheney decides Argentina needs to be liberated before he leaves office, well, they only have their radical female president to blame. Cheney's probably saying to himself that he's disappointed with some of the Argentine leaders and generals, letting some dame tell them what to do; "They're not carrying the big stick I would have expected ... ", just like those Democrat wimps who let Pelosi push them around.

Man, this unipolar world business just isn't working out quite as well as nationalists like Cheney or his neoconservative friends seem to think. The surly natives is those lesser countries seem to have their own ideas about how they should operate in the world. Who would have imagined such a development?

Tags: argentina, bush doctrine, colombia, cristina fernández, dick cheney, hugo chávez, venezuela