Readers of this blog are used to me saying that Maria Anastasia O'Grady from the Wall Street Journal is right on the dot about Venezuela. Well, today I think she is missing the boat in her criticism of Obama trip at Port of Spain.
Not that Obama is exempt of some criticism, he could have handled things a little bit better. But as I have explained in previous posts on the subject he was in a lose-lose situation and considering that, he did pretty well, as far as I am concerned.
Expecting that in a single summit Obama would corner the Castros, tell Chavez down, browbeat Ortega, muffle Evo and more or less silence a few others is simply unreasonable: such meetings are not the appropriate scenario and besides, it is never nice nor polite to gang on the absent ones even if they do that to you when you are not around. That is why a president as a Secretary of State and ambassadors, to tell Cuba what to do, in the hallways, at other meetings, at newspapers. The less a US president speaks on Cuba the better. There will be plenty of future opportunities for Obama to speak on Raul, Hugo, and Evo (Danielito and Rafael can be just ignored as the first one is irrelevant and the other as the US dollar as his currency).
At any rate, as the dust starts settling, the piece by Antonio Caño that I translated yesterday is the one closest to what really happened at Port of Spain. All the rest is media show that we should not fall into.
-The end-