Chavez: prepare (again) for war with Colombia and USA
The Latin American Herald Tribune reports:
President Hugo Chavez called Sunday on Venezuelan soldiers and civilians who support him to prepare for war, after warning the governments of Colombia and the United States that Venezuelans are “ready for anything.”
Chavez issued the strong warning after adopting the view of former Cuban President Fidel Castro that the United States annexed Colombia with the treaty those two nations recently signed allowing U.S. soldiers to use military bases in the neighboring South American country.
“Let them not make a mistake, because we (Venezuelans) are ready for anything,” Chavez remarked, thereby implicitly ruling out his acceptance of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s offer to try and arrange a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
“One must speak with love and therefore I say to the (U.S.) president, (Barack) Obama: don’t make a mistake and order an open attack on Venezuela using Colombia,” said the Venezuelan leader on his Sunday radio and television program “Alo Presidente.”
Before shouting “Fatherland, socialism or death,” Chavez ordered members of the armed forces “to prepare yourselves for war as the best way to avoid it.”
To which I (and I suspect most Venezuelans) wearily say: Yeah, yeah.
We’ve been here before, of course– as recently as last year.
Caracas Chronicles describes the reaction to Chavez’s latest alarm as a “universal yawn” and “the equivalent of a national roll-of-the-eyes, swiftly followed by speculation that the guy must be really hurtin’ for a way to rally the faithful if we’ve entered the Rhetorical Galtieri phase already.”
Nobody seems to be in any doubt that this is a smoke-curtain: what passes for an official response to the overlapping water/electricity/crime crises now buffeting the country.
Comments
| 10 November 2009, 8:43 pm |
Is Chavez really spoiling for a fight with American forces?
| 10 November 2009, 8:51 pm |
Is Chavez really spoiling for a fight with American forces?
I doubt he’s spoiling for an actual (as opposed to verbal) fight with anyone.
| 10 November 2009, 9:18 pm |
From the comments at Caraca Chronicles:
I think Chavez’s isn’t just trying to distract the people from their problems and trying to use nationalism to gain support. I’m pretty sure he plans to escalate this at least to the point where it gives him an excuse to take over border states Tachira and Zulia to protect the country (I think Isea already “recommended” Chavez to do so). So the whole thing isn’t just hot air coming out of Chavez. It’s yet another way Chavez plans to use to forcefully remove the opposition from the positions they rightfully won in the election.
| 10 November 2009, 9:18 pm |
Chavez hasn’t yet found anything useful to spend Venezuela’s vast oil revenues on.
| 10 November 2009, 9:25 pm |
Castro has taught his sycophant protege well.
| 10 November 2009, 10:18 pm |
Chavez is beginning to remind me of Nasser when he was bellowing about the coming war with Israel, both before and after “The Setback” of June 1967.
“Fatherland, socialism or death”: The first & last two words sound familar. The nice thing about my fellow* Latins is that while they may bellow phrases like “Fatherland or Death” and other cries of support for their Leader of the moment, they usually do not believe such nonsense unlike some other peoples. Well, if Aghanistan does not work well, maybe Obama can take a page from Reagan’s playbook and invade, ah excuse me, “rescue” Venezuela in another “Splendid Little War”, “Bully!”.
More likely though, the US will let Brazil, Uncle Sam’s Policeman on the Latin beat, take the lead in any real confrontation or war with Chavez, however unlikely that really is.
*My Mom’s parents came from Italy, prewar they were always listening and applauding Mussolini on the radio. Of course after Pearl Harbor that stopped.
| 10 November 2009, 10:38 pm |
Chavez is amusing. His Paul Anka wardrobe, his Castro rants and his pineapple face reminding of Noriega.
Sometimes I wonder if he is a CIA asset and has been since the last time he was deposed for a day or two.
Since then he is probably supplying info about Iran and Russia.
I have no proof of this but how else can this clown still be there breathing….
| 10 November 2009, 10:48 pm |
The danger lies in the promise of escalation. Chavez may just be spouting hot air but he did end up closer to war with Columbia last year that I believe he or the regime expected.
War has a way of appearing unexpectedly from rhetorical confrontation, especially for dictatorships with a pretence of popular support.
| 10 November 2009, 11:25 pm |
Richard, that sounds a lot like the way Nasser blundered into the Six-Day War with Israel.
| 11 November 2009, 12:12 am |
In case of a war, I wouldn’t count too much on Obama taking the side of the democratic regime (Uribe). The way he (and Hillary) handled the Honduran crisis was a disgrace (although they saw reason in the end).
| 11 November 2009, 12:50 am |
What a silly buffoon Chavez is. He has a history of threats of course, having made threats to put tanks on the streets in people voted against him.
Saying this, the threat against Colombia and the U.S. is simpy laughable.
One day, the poster boy for the Trendy Left will have a very hard wake-up call.
Live long…
| 11 November 2009, 1:01 am |
“Fatherland, socialism or death”
Chavez is actually as awful as nutty Republicans think Obama is.
| 11 November 2009, 2:20 am |
“and if they don’t believe us now, will they ever believe us?”
If Chavez was a right winger, the left would be all over him as a dictatorial warlord.
He gets a free pass because, although he’s a totalitarian thug, he’s a leftist totalitarian thug…which in plain language means that he’s a warrior or the people. or some such shit.
| 11 November 2009, 4:47 am |
W’s Venezuelan policy was: ignore Venezuela. It gave rise to his equally subtle, restrained Bolivian and Ecuadorian policies.
So long as the pathetic Marxist caudillos of these countries pose no security threats, they should be allowed to demonstrate all that Marxism and socialism can do.
Yawn.
| 11 November 2009, 8:39 am |
Chavez is cruisin’ for a bruisin’
| 11 November 2009, 11:13 am |
“Fatherland, socialism or death,”
In other words National-socialism. Didnt we already have that in the 1930s?
Today the leftists are in bed with Islamofascism and tomorrow will be with 3rd world Nazism.
What is wrong with these democracy hating leftists? Next thing you know they will be praising 1930s Germany and the holocaust as anti-imperialist.
| 11 November 2009, 11:14 am |
There is something wrong with the comment board. It accepts the comment put refuses to show it. What gives?
| 11 November 2009, 1:35 pm |
Zelaya has been thrown under the bus by Obama & Co.
Chavez is not pleased.
He asked (through diplomatic channels) that Obama immediately return the autographed autobiography (aka (monomaniacal monograph) that Chavez gave him as a profound and heart-felt gift offering.
Obama said he couldn’t find it.
Chavez is doubly not pleased.
War is inevitable.
| 11 November 2009, 2:21 pm |
War is inevitable.
The last straw was when roster adjustments left no Venezuelans on either team in the recently concluded World Series of baseball.
| 11 November 2009, 3:26 pm |
If I remember correctly, in the last episode Chavez publicly ordered tanks to the Colombian border. Of course nobody ever actually saw any tanks go anywhere, and the whole thing seems to have been an excuse to fill some dead air on an 8 hour broadcast of Alo Presidente.
ZZzzzzzzzzzzz(in).
| 12 November 2009, 1:57 am |
Of course he isn’t right – cause his reactions and words are too aggressive and stubborn for the level of development of his socialistic country!
| 13 November 2009, 12:35 am |
I think Chavez is just trying to scare people or at least take some coverage off of all the other problems he’s created in the country. Some people don’t even think the US should take the threat seriously: http://www.newsy.com/videos/fighting_words_in_south_america
| 13 November 2009, 12:35 am |
I think Chavez is just trying to scare people or at least take some coverage off of all the other problems he’s created in the country. Some people don’t even think the US should take the threat seriously: http://www.newsy.com/videos/fighting_words_in_south_america
| 13 November 2009, 12:35 am |
I think Chavez is just trying to scare people or at least take some coverage off of all the other problems he’s created in the country. Some people don’t even think the US should take the threat seriously: http://www.newsy.com/videos/fighting_words_in_south_america
Fatherland, socialism or death
Heh.