Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, April 20, 2009 8:37:07 AM
I already have an entire week’s worth of Obamateurisms lined up from
Barack Obama’s trip to Trinidad this weekend, but let’s start with the
one that might have set the stage for all the fumbles that followed. My
friend Monica Showalter at IBD
notes that Obama kicked off the Summit of the Americas by failing to
understand the importance of the Monroe Doctrine, its highly relevant
application in today’s Latin America, and missing one important piece
of historical fact about the Bush administration:
Perhaps this lack of leadership is based on ignorance of
history. Obama told CNN En Espanol: “There has always been a tradition
of concern that the United States has been heavy-handed when it comes
to foreign policy in Latin America. And that’s not something
that just arose during the Bush administration. That’s something that
dates back to the Monroe Doctrine and a long history of U.S.
involvement in Latin America.”
Some history: President Bush was the first U.S. leader in decades to
launch no military action on a Latin country. Not very “heavy handed.”
In fact, his immigration plan showed he was a softie.
Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine was declared by President Monroe to
protect Latin America’s infant democracies from European takeover, a
real prospect in 1823. Obama’s double apology for that as Iran and
Russia erect bases in the region is a bad signal to the region’s real
democracies — and comfort for our foes.
The Monroe Doctrine chased off European monarchies from expanding
colonization in the New World and set a policy of self-determination
almost a century before Woodrow Wilson would make that American policy.
While we obviously haven’t had a spotless record in Central and South
America, the region was far better off under the Monroe Doctrine than
they otherwise would have been — and so were we. Maybe Obama should
have studied its history a little more closely before becoming the
latest successor to Monroe.