President Obama is taking heat from Newt Gingrich and others for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez and “making nice” with Cuba, etc. Since I’m a dogged liberal opponent of those two particular regimes, let me say I support Obama’s moves and think the Republicans are full of it. It was Chavez who approached Obama at the Trinidad summit, not the other way around. Had Obama shunned him in that context, it would have been an international incident and an embarrassment. On Cuba, Obama is not “making nice” — on the contrary, it is Raul Castro who is making nice, and who has little choice but to do so. In setting a new tone from Washington, Obama has the upper hand.
On Eduardo Galeano, the author of the book Chavez presented to Obama: Eamonn recently translated and fisked a Galeano column which trotted out the canard that Palestinians can’t be antisemites because they are Semites. Intellectual honesty is not the man’s strong suit.
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