So I gotta ask...

[texas-reddmann.livejournal.com]

Why is it OK that Nixon went to China, or Reagan dealt with Gorbachev, but Obama trying to deal with the punks of today is wimpy cowardice? Please, find me something that approaches real logic for this one. Note, I said REAL logic.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Personally I don't have a problem with Obama talking to Chavez, but if I was going to come up with a difference I'd say it was probably to do with China being big, a likely power in the future, and the Communist Party being really entrenched. Chavez doesn't run a country which is that important, and I don't think his influence over South America will be as great in 30 years as Mao's legacy still is over East Asia. It would be like the difference between Khomeni coming to meet Reagan in '82 as against Ahmedinadjad coming to meet Bush in 2007.

[texas-reddmann.livejournal.com]

So because they can hurt us, we should make nice to them, but Chavez and their ilk can't we should slam them around? Oh. OK. Then we're supposed to be bullies to anyone whose country is smaller and weaker than ours and says bad things about us, or otherwise we're all gonna die because we're too weak?

And conservatives think that worldview is going to make us liked by people supposed to be our allies?

[blueduck37.livejournal.com]

The Citgo station down the block from me says that Chavez does actually have some influence in matters outside his own borders.

I don't like Chavez, for the record, but I see no harm in attempting to be diplomatic with him.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

The people of a few of Venezuela's neighbors are extremely friendly toward Chavez. He has more influence than you imply here, and if we don't start talking with Venezuela and Cuba, we *will* end up having to deal with several more South American countries going Castro. (Wife is Venezuelan ex-aristocrat and gets news from her relatives still living there.)

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

We get almost as much oil from Venezuela as we do from Saudi Arabia, and SA has us by the balls.


But they can't hurt us at all.
=/

He's no Mao, but VZ is important and dialogue needs to happen.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I think you underestimate both the value of Venezuela's natural resources, and their influence on the other developing countries of South America.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

OIL.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Modern Republicans, logic, two unmixy things

[ihatemostthings.livejournal.com]

lol, yes. their response to all this so far has mostly been to deny that nixon and mow ever met. *sigh*

[spoon-o-doom.livejournal.com]

Unmixy.

I like that word!

[dr-pepper-spray.livejournal.com]

I'm going to ask a stupid question without doing any investigative work on my own: who initiated the infamous hand-shake? Did Obama eagerly approach Chavez to shake the hand of an admired dictator or did Chavez go out of his way to shake hands with an American President who's fairly popular around the world but especially in Latin America? Also Obama didn't specifically hop on a plane to meet Chavez personally in Venezuela..or am I wrong here?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It was a photo op at the conference of the Americas. Although Chavez later approached Obama to give him a book about colonialism in Latin America that doesn't paint a pretty picture of the US.

[traag.livejournal.com]

You should say 'objective logic'

[texas-reddmann.livejournal.com]

Point granted.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

icon love

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

Well, studies in the relevant field have shown the reasons to be rather straightforward:





You see.

[texas-reddmann.livejournal.com]

I believe you mean "durrhurr", not "hurrdurr". But the study has validity, based on their follow up test subject....

[weswilson]

I cannot argue with your maths.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that beginning to laugh in the middle of a yawn was so painful.

[ihatemostthings.livejournal.com]

hahahaahhaah. gah i love it. so much.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Dead!

[kgbman.livejournal.com]

This is just a guess, but perhaps in the minds of Republicans Nixon and Reagan already had impeccable anti-communism credentials when they made their overtures to Mao and Gorbachev, so they weren't afraid that they would give away the store so to speak. They picture Obama as a weak-kneed anti-American radical who is only meeting with foreign leaders to grovel at their feet and make abject apologies.

Now that you mention it though, at the time some neoconservatives were furious with Reagan for trying to make deals with Gorbachev.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is any "real" logic to the (mostly Republican wing-nut) criticisms of Obama. To search for one is to start down the path of insanity.

(Not that I'm happy with the Obama Administration at the moment, but the wing-nuts keep searching desperately for something to bitch about.)

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

I think that when Reagan and Nixon went to talk with the "bad guys", they went saying "we want you to be like us", whereas the image of Obama's meetings seems to be more like "we want to be like you".

I dunno, though. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta. If you look at the image of where they all stood/stand on international political reform, it does seem like it's plausible.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

the image of Obama's meetings seems to be more like "we want to be like you"

based on?