President Bush Polishes Good Impression Skills at Summit of the Americas.

Bush Taunts Latin Americans at Summit of the Americas

President Screw Diplomacy fired another blast if incendiary neocon rhetoric at our Latin American neighbors with a thinly veiled threat about "choosing between competing visions" for the future. Scary excerpt courtesy of the Yahoo News AP wire:

BRASILIA, Brazil - President Bush didn't name names Sunday when he called on Latin Americans to boldly defend strong democratic institutions and reject any drift back to the days of authoritarian rule.

Fidel Castro spent the past two days hurling criticism at the United States at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina.

Eyeing three upcoming presidential elections in Latin America, Bush said citizens must choose "between two competing visions" for their future.

And Bush's underlying message here is: "Choose my way, or I'll turn you into a Western Hemisphere version of Iraq." Everyone knows that Bush has as big a hardon for Venezuela's oil as he did for Iraq's. Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, had better remember the U.S. backed coup attempt against him in 2002, since Bush's words are a less than subtle reminder of that act, and possible things to come should things not proceed in a manner that satisfies our Petty Little Overlord.

One, he said, pursues representative government, integration into the world community and freedom's transformative power for individuals. "The other seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades by playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor and blaming others for their own failures to provide for the people," he said. "We must make tough decisions today to ensure a better tomorrow."

Bush also urged Brazil, the continent's largest economy, to use its considerable regional influence to prod into reality a U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Bush believes such a free-trade zone stretching from Alaska to Argentina would create jobs and lift the region's 220 million poor to better lives.

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Nothing the United States has ever done in Latin America has improved the lives of a single ordinary citizen. Don't believe me? How about the 1973 coup in which President Salvador Allende was assassinated and replaced with the U.S. backed dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Do the brutal U.S. trained and backed El Salvadoran death squads strike you as a way to foster better relations?

How about the fact that Ronald Reagan ordered the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in the wake of Daniel Ortega's ouster of the U.S. backed Somoza dictatorship?

I could go on, but I think, or at least hope, that you get the point--namely that President Bad Impression Guy means no good at all in Latin America, and will squeeze every possible dollar out of that region that he can.