US does little as hemispheric crisis grows

A growing crisis continues to engulf much of the American hemisphere, with the rise of bitterly anti-US regimes whose leaders have longstanding ties and sympathies with state sponsors of terrorism.

The Bush administration has done nothing visible to help democratic forces in Venezuela to remove autocratic Colonel Hugo Chavez, who looks to Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and the late Mao Tse-tung as his inspirations while he aids the narcoterrorists of neighboring Colombia.

A left-wing extremist has just been inaugurated president of Brazil. President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva has spent years organizing the hemisphere’s revolutionary movements, guerrilla and terrorist groups, and their political sympathizers in collaboration with the Cuban government. He has vowed to turn Brazil into a military power, stating that the government should resume development and production of a 30-kiloton nuclear bomb and proliferate military high technology to any regime it wishes. An aide recently reiterated Lula’s nuclear plans.

A leftist colonel who tried to overthrow a democratically elected president has just been elected president of Ecuador.

Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups are strengthening their footholds throughout Latin America.

Sentiment is building to dismantle the successful, US-led inter-American security system of the past 55 years.

Meanwhile, the staunchly pro-US president of Colombia, inaugurated just months ago, wants to work more closely with the United States to crush Marxist-Leninist narcoterrorist groups in his country. The State Department responded by terminating aid to Colombia’s most effective air force unit.

It’s time for the administration to engage.