Democrats and Latin America-time to break with the GOP-DLC consensus

[Ken Burch]

Among Bill Clinton's worst choices(and least discussed choices at that)was his decision to continue the Reagan/Bush Latin America policies with no change whatsoever.

This started BEFORE he was president, when he allowed the Contra murderers to train in Arkansas. It continued with his decision not to close down the Latin American Torture Academy(official name: School of The Americas)in Georgia, and his insistence on pushing for Republican-drafted "free trade" deals with Latin American countries. It also included the Clinton Administration's insistence on trying to force all Latin American countries to adopt "structural adjustment"(i.e., austerity)policies and to abandon all efforts to improve life for workers and the poor in their countries.

Can we all agree that, whomever the party nominates in 2008, the next Democratic president MUST abandon this ugly legacy and, instead, support social justice, workers' rights and self-determination throughout the hemisphere?

Can we all agree that neoliberalism must, finally, be driven out of the Americas, and consigned to history's dustbin?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Aww, c'mon. We have lots of friends in Latin America.

Our brilliant support of RW militarists and death squads has paid enormous dividends. Pinochet still thinks were really nice. Not to mention..well, there's always...and...is Israel part of Latin America?

[Ken Burch]

2. Israel? well, sort of...It's hot there some of the time,

and they've shipped guns for us to the Guatemalan junta, and they're more and more into uniforms...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. They performed the same humanitarian service for South Africa.

While they were still fighting the ANC.

[...of J.Temperance]

4. Some elaboration please

This started BEFORE he was president, when he allowed the Contra murderers to train in Arkansas.

Can you post a link to a legitimate website that proves this statement?

It also included the Clinton Administration's insistence on trying to force all Latin American countries to adopt "structural adjustment"(i.e., austerity)policies and to abandon all efforts to improve life for workers and the poor in their countries.

How exactly did President Clinton try to force all Latin American countries to do this?

Good grief, I thought we couldn't go a day WITHOUT a DLC bashing OP. However, the President Clinton bashing OP's have been fewer I've noticed.

[Ken Burch]

6. Clinton did allow Contras to train in Ark. while he was still gov.

It was part of his "triangulation" strategy. Even though the majority of the American people always OPPOSED Reagan and Bush on Central America policy, Clinton felt he had to agree with them, even going so far as to maintain the senseless and pointless embargo against Cuba. There was also the well-documented use of the Mena airport to allow Contra-associated drug smuggling, which could not have occurred without Clinton's cooperation.

His efforts to push Latin America and other countries into acceptance of the "Washington Consensus"(austerity policies for the poor majority and the cultivation of an elite technocratic minority)is also on record.

When Clinton spoke of democracy, he always insisted on coupling "democracy and capitalism" together, as if they had to beinextricably linked, even if the people of Latin America and other countries didn't want right-wing capitalist economics. We can see the damage this rigid policy caused and continues to cause, in Latin America, in South Africa(where Clinton forced Nelson Mandela to agree to an austerity plan and thus abandon poor black South Africans, an abandonment which may eventually destabilize democratic government and interracial reconciliation there)and Eastern Europe, where U.S. insistence on capitalism and austerity has put democracy on the defensive.

And the School of the Americas still exists, and exists basically unchanged from the Reagan days. That's why Father Roy Bourgeois still leads protests against it every year at its Georgia location.

My point isn't to bash Clinton. It is to argue that we must finally have the courage to break from his Latin America policies(and, actually, to finally break from Reagan's, since Clinton's were exactly the same there).

[...of J.Temperance]

9. Can I have a link to a legitimate website?

The only websites that I've seen that suggest the President Clinton and Mesa, Arkansas and Contras and Oliver North stuff are websites that are....well, you know "those" kind of websites, which I don't consider to be legitimate.

So is there a legitimate website that also suggests such things? If there is, I'd like to see it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. I'm not interested in bashing Clinton or even the DLC either

But unfortunately there has been a bi-partisan approach toward Latin America and much of the third world that goes back a long, long ways; long before the DLC existed. This approach has included support for some the the most conservative and reactionary elements. Even under Jimmy Carter's human rights policy support for murderous regimes continued although with less enthusiasm than under Reagan.

Democratic administrations like Republican administrations always equated "free markets" as an essential element of their definition of Democracy. What if the ordinary working people of Latin America don't buy the "free trade" argument any more than the ordinary working people of America?

[...of J.Temperance]

10. A point I hope you can respond to

Even under Jimmy Carter's human rights policy support for murderous regimes continued although with less enthusiasm than under Reagan.

Are you talking about the Somoza government in Nicaragua?

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. actually, I was thinking primarily of El Salvador

Please understand that I have no desire whatsoever to bash Jimmy Carter or the Democratic Party. I think though it is necessary to understand that much of U.S. foreign policy is bi-partisan.

I suspect you're familiar with the 1980 assassination of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero:

link:

http://salt.claretianpubs.org/romero/romero.html

"By 1980, amidst overarching violence, Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him to cease sending military aid because he wrote, "it is being used to repress my people." The U.S. sent $1.5 million in aid every day for 12 years. His letter went unheeded. Two months later he would be assassinated."


However, even the Carter Administration did continue aid to the Somoza government until 1978 when their cause became hopeless.

link:

http://library.thinkquest.org/17749/lhistory.html

on the other side of the world in East Timor the Carter Administration like the Ford Administration before it and the Reagan, Bush I and early Clinton Administrations after it continued to aid the government of Indonesia in their genocidal war against East Timor.

link:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/index.htm

I take joy whatsoever in pointing these things out. I only hope that the more people know the truth -- the greater the possibility exist to change such policies.

[Douglas Carpenter]

12. .

[Ken Burch]

13. Carter did let Somoza fall, but he took a position on El Salvador

That was little different from the one Reagan would take.

[IsItJustMe]

5. I think South America is doing fine and will do so without any american

help for now on. Maybe we could just leave them alone. I am sure they would appreciate it.

[pinto]

8. As far as I know, Bill's not running in 2008.

[Ken Burch]

14. No, but Hillary is, and it will be a tough fight

to get her from taking the exact same position Bill would have(or Reagan would have).

We need a policy, whomever we nominate, that breaks clearly from the status quo "free" trade/pro-austerity/come back Scoop Jackson all is forgiven position Hillary will instinctively support.

[arcos]

15. You are right, in fact in 1997 Clinton ended a ban on arms sales to LatAm

Clinton Ends 20-Year Ban On High-Tech Arms to Latin America

THE CLINTON administration on August 1 rescinded a 20 year old policy of restricting transfers of advanced U.S. weapons, such as combat aircraft, to Latin America, in favor of a more lenient policy of evaluating sales on a case by case basis. Although U.S. military contractors and a few Latin American states welcomed the decision, the predominant response from Latin America was one of criticism and skepticism.

Under the new guidelines, an interagency working group, to be chaired by the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs (although currently vacant, John Holum, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), is expected to assume this position as a result of ACDA's consolidation into the State Department), will meet intermittently to review proposed arms sales and to reconcile arms sales with arms control objectives. U.S. officials insist that ultimate responsibility for restraint rests with Latin American countries, since arms purchases are domestic decisions. The administration is removing the restrictions to prevent U.S. firms from being "disadvantaged" in competition for sales in the region.

Lockheed Martin, vying for an estimated $500 million Chilean contract for approximately 20 combat aircraft, was an immediate beneficiary. The new policy permitted Lockheed to meet Chile's August 7 deadline for submission of a second set of technical specifications, which went beyond the level of information provided to Chile by Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas (manufacturer of the F/A 18) under Clinton's March authorization. (See ACT, April 1997.) Prospects for Lockheed's F 16, in the competition with aircraft such as the French Mirage 2000 5 and Russian MiG 29, would otherwise have been dim. A U.S. government official said the Chilean deadline was a "driving force" in the timing of the decision.

<snip>

Former President Jimmy Carter, who originally instituted the ban to limit sales to dictatorships and regimes with poor human rights records, expressed "deep disappointment" with the reversal and asked the administration to postpone any sales until the issue could be raised at the next Summit of the Americas in April 1998. Carter also advocated instituting a two year moratorium for both arms buyers and sellers, a proposal supported by the presidents of Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay.

<snip>

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997_08/latamer.asp

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. here is an interesting article from the Council on Foreign Relations

(hardly a leftist organization)

link:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/5156/latin_america.html

snip: "In the remainder of Latin America, the lack of meaningful benefits from more open economies and less state control have sparked political and social backlashes. Luckily, the democratic way is established enough to accommodate the political unhappiness of the millions who have been left on the economic sidelines. But the results have not pleased Washington: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil; a representative of coca-growing peasants nearly winning the presidency in Bolivia and now heading the largest opposition in both houses of Congress; and leftist presidential candidates gaining in Ecuador and Argentina.

Central to the 80/20 problem is the skewed nature of U.S. knowledge of the region. I recently asked a U.S. government official to assess the reach of Cuba's social services in Venezuela. He had no idea, because Venezuela's poor -- 80% of the country -- remain virtually "impenetrable" to the United States. It was a refreshingly frank acknowledgment of the fact that most Americans, whether governmental or private, talk to basically the same people -- their peers -- in the top 20%. Accordingly, over the years, they have acquired and transmitted to Washington a highly distorted view of "the street" in Latin America. Conversations with taxi drivers at airports or hotel maids hardly balance the profile. Thus, the U.S. political class has largely set Latin American policy priorities according to knowledge mostly gleaned from people who already enjoy economic success and political power."

snip: "No wonder that the prospect of a number of left-of-center governments taking power in the region provokes fear in Washington. Recently, old-line ideological conservatives in the United States and Latin America warned that Lula, Chavez, Castro and their supporters, with a little help from the rebels in Colombia, will deliver South America to the anti-American narco-terrorist dark side. But with the Soviet Union history, Cuba no longer arming insurgencies but instead sponsoring peace talks, and only one superpower calling the shots, what is the real fear? Chavez aggravates Washington, but his oil still flows to the U.S. And despite their torturous political and economic problems, neither Chavez nor Lula is flirting with old-style statist alternatives. Domestic politics and international economic forces won't indulge such temptations. U.S. hand-wringing over "populism" -- code for the disorganized poor gaining a political voice -- is thus a convenient distraction from the far more difficult challenge of giving breathing space to local solutions that, in questioning the reformist orthodoxy, strive for a greater balance between market forces and state intervention. With Colombia, Haiti and Argentina in partial collapse, Central America and the Caribbean ridden with crime and increasingly vulnerable to drugs and thugs, and a newly invigorated electorate voting anti-establishment candidates in the Amazon and Andes regions, we can no longer rely on the 20% solution."

link to full article:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/5156/latin_america.html

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. kick and recommended