The Dodo Bird Lives at Foggy Bottom

We have come to a realization that as far as projecting U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere, or mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean, the dodo bird lives. Too harsh you say? We shall take this one step further and add that the dodo should be replace the bald eagle on the great seal of the Department of State's Western Hemisphere Affairs desk.

Distance offers perspective. Indeed, for the past few weeks WHPW Editors have been posting from faraway places where DC and its ways matter not a whole bloody lot. Political tumbleweed has replaced the cackling voices of the talking heads and beltway bandits. Our minds clear from clutter and cobwebs, just like on a clear summer blue-sky day. And when we think about things back home, the image of the now extinct dodo birds pops to mind.

A dictator just 90 miles from our shores just atop a system deemed a state sponsor of terrorism since the 1980s. Or, just south of the Potemkim Cuba, another madman spawned of the same jackal that are the Castro Brothers, has created a beachhead for Castroism in South America. You see, if we failed to deal with one why do we shift and focus on the weaker foe?

The Colombian drug war rages and the terrorists in the that country divide it, but rather than focus our efforts in Congress on winning the fight there, we open another front in Mexico. Ahh, yes, that Mexican government that is rich with oil, poor in everything else. More U.S. taxpayer monies headed to that mess where even the Zapatistas and other terrorist groups spread from the remote areas.

The Sandinistas are back in power in Nicaragua, embracing not only Cuba, but another more sinister terrorist state, Iran. Brazil seeks nuclear power just for "civilian" purposes and serves as the proxy for the Foro de Sao Paolo, but we choose to talk about corn and ethanol on our most recent high-level visit to the region.

Anti-Americanism or populist movements - a tool of the international left - burn a fierce path in Ecuador and Bolivia, and in the United States as well. Groups funded by radicals fund anti-U.S. immigration rallies, and even the Mexican president chimed in that "Everywhere there is a Mexico, there is Mexico."

Unlike the bald eagle in search of prey or its piercing eyes in search of its next meal, our Western Hemisphere is monitored by political dodos. The dodo was a flightless bird you see and its perspective limited to what it would mainly see from its vantage point of the ground, the short term.

So, we aim to fly like an eagle but act like a dodo. Our "friends" in the region have taken advantage of it.

HMJ