Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
Hugo Chavez has a new theory: that the US has developed a secret technology and is using it to give cancer to left wing Latin American rulers that we don't like. After all, Fidel Castro, the Hero of Venezuela himself, the president of Paraguay, the current and former presidents of Brazil and now Cristina Kirchner of Argentina have all come down with (quite different) cancers....Unfortunately, the US Department of State has felt it necessary to respond, calling the Chavez statements "horrific and reprehensible." Machiavelli would have counseled an enigmatic smile and a statement emphasizing the importance of regular physical exams as there does seem to be a lot cancer around these days -- and would have suggested that we go on to offer treatment in the US to President Chavez and his colleagues if they are worried.
"This official State Department press release is brought to you as a public service by the American Cancer Society, the Ad Council, and your local embassy."
Chavez' statement like most of his speeches was intended more as political theater than as serious analysis of the way the world works; nevertheless ... As a psychological portrait of a certain element of the Latin left, the speech is quite revealing.
First, the US is portrayed as immensely powerful. As a society we not only produce medical advances that others seek to imitate; we have mastered the secret technologies of cancer itself. The secrets in our labs are years beyond the pitiful, pathetic efforts of Venezuelan and Cuban scientists and health workers. Who knows what other incredible advances the capitalist world masters are holding in reserve: drones are clearly just the tip of the iceberg.
Invisible airplanes! Really big bombs! iPods the size of a credit card! Talking dogs! Maybe even (shudder) death rays!
Yet this analysis of our alleged medical prowess, like much leftie analysis of our alleged political omnicompetence, is curiously disembodied from actual knowledge of how either science or power works....
Second, this all powerful American capitalist monster is uniquely concerned with the mortal threat posed by the heroic populist revolutionary movements of Latin America. American policymakers do not actually think about Hugo Chavez very much; when they do they see him more as an irritating nuisance than mortal danger: a buzzing horsefly, not a tiger or even a cobra. ...
This is not what Chavez wants his followers to believe. There must be a cosmic drama: Don Quixote tilting at a giant. "Aspiring anklebiter" is not how the glorious leader of the Great Bolivarian Cultural Revolution wants to be known. ...The sad truth is that even if we had invented some kind of untraceable multi-cancer agent and decided to use it, we wouldn't be wasting it on Venezuela. There might be a wave of cancers in Iran, where recent news events point to a certain activism on the part of US and other agents.
Either that, or a really widespread epidemic of lead poisoning and spontaneous human combustion.
Some Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders, and perhaps a few others in the region, might suddenly show the effects of intensive chemotherapy. But as is so often the case, poor Latin America would be the orphan stepchild of US foreign policy. Maybe we would give Chavez the flu.
Zing!
As we said yesterday, a competent CIA would have already given him AIDS, influenza and the clap.
