Can I Get a Bush?

There was a ball for the Castro brothers, a ball for the Arab and Muslim World, a ball for Iran, and a ball for Putin. Obama has used the whole year of 2009 to take the balls out of the stadium that Bush had accumulated over eight years. After an impressive series of rhetorical volleys from Cairo and Istanbul, Obama, mocked by the conservatives as “orator-in-chief” (in contrast to Bush the “commander-in-chief”), is beginning 2010 ready to play in pure form. What about the opponents? Are they ready?

If we make a ranking, the first would be some of our primary Latin Americans that never lose a chance to pass up an opportunity. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the narcissistic Leninist regime of Hugo Chavez has set out to mount a miniature regional cold war. And the truth is, it makes him appear to be faithful to the original Soviet model not only for repressing the opposition, but also for cutting off the lights and reducing basic essentials.

The Castro brothers are not cut off, either. They are so demoralized in the face of Obama’s lack of aggression that they had to end the year with some impressive military handiwork to make very clear to their population that the Cuban Army is alert and disposed to repel an impossible invasion if it were to happen. If I were Obama, I would lift the embargo immediately, without conditions, and return Guantanamo to Cuba ensuring the collapse of the regimen and the weeping of the Castros. They spend fifty years resisting imperialism to end up seduced by an African-American brought up in Honolulu? What humiliation!

The reality is that not even Lula was able to resist the anti-imperialist incantations. Instead of forging a strategic alliance with Obama, which would have important triangular repercussions as much in Asia as Europe, especially from the energy and climate change aspect, nothing else occurred to him besides parting the year by receiving the Iranian president.

On Lula’s list appears the Iranian regime, also astonished in the face of Obama’s intent to ingratiate himself. A reasonable international agreement that might make Iran’s civil nuclear program easy would be disastrous for the harsh critics of Tehran. Then they would be able to oppose him only with fingernails and teeth. It would not stop Putin’s Russia from being included in the ranking, though.

After all the tension and misunderstandings derived from the anti-missile shield that Bush wanted to install in Poland and the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Georgia’s prospects of entering into NATO, and at the end, Georgia’s war, Hillary Clinton was presented in Moscow (literally) with a small box that had a button that initialized relations. Some observers say that the Russian elite, still accustomed to Cold War logic, have taken this meeting as a show of weakness that confirms the decline of America. Some say that, at worst, Obama is like Gorbachov: a good guy with positive intentions who is a victim of his own innocence and is running the risk of being the last president of a USA with the rank of superpower.

By now, Obama has traveled halfway only to find himself alone with the echo of his own voice. The Bolivian awakening, the Castro gerontocracy (geriatric leadership), the guardians of the Revolution, and the men of the KGB all need Yankee Imperialism in order to survive. We do not need to read their letters to the Three Wise Men to guess what their wishes are for 2010. Can I return the Obama that you guys brought last year?