President Obama dealt with Daniel Ortega’s harangue at the Summit of the Americas much in the same way he dispatched Sec. Clinton in the Democratic primaries and Sen. McCain n the general election – appealing to people’s need to move forward and not get bogged down in the ridiculous past:
“To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We’ve all heard these arguments before.”
The last administration tried to ignore the rest of the world or to act like a belligerent asshat when they were forced to work in international organizations. It didn’t work and made American interests suffer for it. We live in the 21st century now and we’ve got a finally got a president worthy of the bridge Bill Clinton began building a decade ago.
You have to admit that its ironic though that Ortega brought up Iran/Contra where nobody was prosecuted because Bush 41 absolved everyone in light of the fact that we might be repeating the same pattern here wrt torture. If there never are any investigations then the only question will be who from Bush 43s administration will end up f*cking up the country in a future Republican administration.
I think it’s great how Obama and his people handled the criticism, and it’s good to see Hillary being a solid team player and staying on message no matter what, and I agree we need to focus on the future.
But, man, if there’s any country that has a right to complain about our meddlesome ways, it’s Nicaragua. And if there’s any country that has every reason to doubt we’ll ever change, it’s Nicaragua. From William Walker in the 1850s to the Contras in the 1980s, we’ve made it clear over and over that we’re happy to stomp on Nicaragua’s sovereignty in the name of American business interests.
William Walker was some loony, ego-maniacal goon from San Francisco who invaded Nicaragua, deposed the government, declared himself president, declared English the official language, re-instituted slavery, and received immediate diplomatic recognition from the US government.
And that was long before the Somozas and the Contras. You can imagine why Nicaraguans would be wary.
Obama’s a statesman in a world of politicians
William Walker was some loony, ego-maniacal goon from San Francisco who invaded Nicaragua, deposed the government, declared himself president, declared English the official language, re-instituted slavery, and received immediate diplomatic recognition from the US government.
Oh. In other words, who John Galt was based on.