Obama math

Cuba, Iran, Venezuela tiny countries compared to the Soviet Union = they deserve the same level of US diplomacy accorded Soviets

Venezuela's economy 600 times smaller than America's = Hugo Chavez not a threat to USA

Throw America under the bus = save my war policy in Afghanistan

While listening to Obama's speech at the National Archives, in which he somehow managed to throw the entire nation under the bus in an effort to appease his political base, it dawned on me that from now on every presidential contender should be tested for math literacy. That would be in addition to submitting to a psychiatric exam.

For Americans who find nothing strange about Obama's figuring with regard to Chavez, stop and think: What is al Qaeda's annual budget?

True, the size of a nation's economy can be a significant factor in its ability to build and maintain a large military. But unless you want to consider begging and thieving legitimate economic enterprises, Pakistan mocks the idea that it takes a large economy to build a nuclear weapon arsenal and maintain large military.

And 9/11 and the rise in power of transnational crime syndicates during the past decade demonstrated that neither a standing army nor a large national budget are prerequisites for mounting successful attacks on a nation.

Luis Fleischman had fun correcting Obama's bizarre math about Chavez but there's nothing laughable about the corrected total he came up with. In his report, The growing Afghanization of Latin America he observed:

[...] Today, Venezuelan airports are being freely used by drug cartels to export drugs to Europe and the U.S.; Chavez and Correa have helped the FARC in the fight against Colombia; Hezbollah cells have increased their fund-raising and other activities in the area with the support of Hugo Chavez; Iran and drug cartels cooperate under the auspices of Chavez; the Maoist Shining Path is reviving its activities in Peru, probably with the help of elements associated with Chavez. In Venezuela Hezbollah and other Islamists are empowered by the regime while Chavez, himself, has made chaos into official policy.

It has been reported that 454 leaders of independent unions have been murdered by parallel official "union" mercenaries. It was also reported that the union leader representing the Toyota workers was murdered after reaching a deal with the Japanese company. The government did not like the deal because an official union leader was able to negotiate a peaceful resolution to a labor conflict. These mercenaries are allegedly criminals recruited in the prisons by the Chavez government.

Criminality has already taken on a life of its own which would be difficult to control even if Chavez were no longer president. High-level criminality could serve drug cartels and radical Islamist groups like Hezbollah, or the FARC. More and more potential seditious, underground and criminal groups are encouraged as these Chavez-type regimes advance in the region.

In other words, the monsters fed by the Chavista alliance now have a life of their own and are likely to survive even after their sponsors are gone.[...]

Put another way: This country is facing one set of problems if it turns out that Barack Obama is very smart but also insane. We'd be facing an entirely different set of problems if he's a stupid man whose only talent is an ear for the speech patterns of intelligent people.