Through a glass, clearly

Chavismo reaction to the first bombs in Libya can only be interpreted as a scare of what might happen to them in a not so distant future.  I think that up to a point some must understand what is happening, in spite of years of self brain washing.  But that Chavez forged ahead a few weeks back in support of Qaddafi cannot simply be swept under the rug and something must be done.  Alas!  Instead of damage control I am afraid that they are making things worse.

The first error was to single out France when it is clear that if France was a main instigator, it certainly did not act alone even if Germany is silent.  If the foreign office of Caracas had any knowledgeable people left inside they should have known that France would never send bombers against advancing Libyan tanks if Berlin had expressly prohibited this.  The reason?  No matter what the electoral and financial reasons for Germany to abstain at the Security Council yesterday the fact of the matter is that French and German economies are today too intertwined for one to do something crazy without some form of discreet consent from the other.  In fact, from reader Lemmy Caution we learned that the Greens at the Bundestag reproached Merkel to have voted NO!  If the Greens support vocally there is no doubt that secretly Merkel supports it.  As such the sad charade of "revolutionary students" protesting tonight at the French Embassy in Caracas is, well, pathetic.  But then again Chavez had sort of given the order and they had to do it.  I suppose that now that we know that US and Britain are bombing barracks in Tripoli will mean protests in front of those embassy tomorrow?

The second error is to speak as if nothing mattered, as if it were a mere diplomatic problem, as if the Venezuelan offer of mediation had been a serious proposal.  There is nothing worse in diplomatic circles to speak against a UN resolution that is backed by all, including the Arab league.  Does anymore at Casa Amarilla has a notion on how difficult it is to obtain a strong consensus on such a matter at the Arab League?  How meaningful that was?  How it was the enough for China, the country Chavez is in love with, to abstain?  Has the foreign ministry of Venezuela read the UN resolution in full?  Did they get someone to explain to them that war crime charges were implied?  How much longer with the  "a mi no me consta"?

All in all we are seeing an haphazard response from chavismo to the Libya crisis, where several contradictory things are attempted, to defend Qaddafi the recognized war criminal, to link all to oil even though the West was already receiving most of Libyan oil, to shield Venezuela from such a future intervention. Unfortunately the only thing that the regime propaganda and declarations are succeeding at is to reveal its future intentions of repression, of never relinquishing power, of preparing idiotic excuses for such a future even though still 70% of our exported oil, I understand, goes to the US.

We see it all, clearly.