Political campaign watchers seem to agree that the election will be about the economy, and that Republicans probably won't have much to say about Obama's foreign policy (partly because it doesn't much differ from what a Republican president might be doing).

The New York  Times' Richard Oppel has a piece today headlined, "Republican Candidates Aim at Obama Foreign Policy."

So what exactly is the Republican case against Obama's foreign policy? That it's too soft on the Hezbollah menace on our southern border.
Seriously.

Oppel writes:

A small but revealing episode unfolded in the closing minutes of the last Republican presidential debate. After the candidates were asked to name the national security issue they most worry about, which had not yet been discussed, Rick Santorum cited radical Islamists in Central and South America.

Mitt Romney agreed, saying that Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group in Lebanon that is backed by Iran and Syria, was working in Mexico, Venezuela and throughout Latin America, posing an "imminent threat." Earlier in the night, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas warned that Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that controls Gaza, also were working in Mexico.

That the candidates would cite the same threat--one denied by the Mexican government, and which seemed to contrast with a State Department report that there are no Hezbollah-related operational cells in this hemisphere--was not a coincidence.

Oppel adds that  "a major thrust of the Republican foreign-policy argument" will include this kind of rhetoric about Obama being "too soft" on the likes of "Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians."

If a journalist is looking to inform voters, it might help to give them a sense of whether what these candidates are saying is grounded in reality. PolitiFact judged  Romney's Hezbollah comments "Mostly False," pointing out that the claim appears to come from a paper by former Bush assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega--and that the paper argues that most of the activity in Latin America is related to fundraising--criminal activity that funnels money back to Lebanon.

The Times judges the accuracy of the Republican charges in passing--the candidates' claims "seemed to contrast with a State Department report." ` The piece is far more concerned with the political strategy at work, and how Republicans might be trying to appeal to some Jewish voters with a message about Obama being soft on Islamic terrorists. It's a strategy that will likely be a lot more successful if reporters aren't going to call them out.

In the new issue of Time (12/12/11), Fareed Zakaria writes in the first sentence of his column:

It is difficult to find a country on the planet that is more anti-American than Pakistan. In a Pew survey this year, only 12 percent of Pakistanis expressed a favorable view of the U.S.

It's not that difficult. The same survey of seven countries found one of them, Turkey, with an even lower 10 percent favorable opinion of the U.S., and Jordan just a hair above at 13 percent.

More important is Zakaria's conclusion:

There is a fundamental tension in U.S. policy toward Pakistan. We want a more democratic country, but we also want a government that can deliver cooperation on the ground. In practice, we always choose the latter, which means we cozy up to the military and overlook its destruction of democracy.

To be clear, he thinks siding with the military over democracy is a bad thing.

But he also thinks the United States "always" choose repression over democracy. This is notable, in that as of this summer he was writing that "all American presidents have supported and should support the spread of democracy." As we pointed out then, this does not square with the record.

And in March 2007, Zakaria wrote critically of the Bush record of intervening in Latin American countries, which he saw as a break with a Reaganesque policy of democracy promotion:

American foreign policy toward Latin America had been on the right track for two decades. Ronald Reagan orchestrated an extraordinary turnaround, supporting human rights, democracy and free trade in several countries.

As FAIR noted, this was a remarkable whitewash of the Reagan record.

And then there was the time Zakaria attempted to argue that U.S. policy towards Haiti was one long attempt to promote democracy:

Consider, for example, Haiti, where the United States has attempted to foster democracy on and off for almost a century--with almost no success. Why? Surely Haitians yearn to be free. But there are aspects of its politics, economics and culture that have made it very difficult to establish liberal democracy.

As FAIR pointed out, this period included U.S. military occupation along with support for a coup against Haiti's democratically elected government.

I suppose there's a chance that Zakaria's views towards U.S. power are becoming more critical. But if he's really reaching this conclusion, why talk about the "tension" between supporting democracy and working against democracy? Maybe he's just having trouble remembering which side of the argument he's on.

Washington Post correspondent Juan Forero has a piece today (11/4/11) that attempts to compare the Greek economic crisis with other similar debt crises, particularly in Latin America. Unfortunately, he draws some misleading conclusions.

Forero's point is that there's a lot about Greece's problems that are reminiscent of troubles in Argentina and Uruguay just a few years ago. One country chose the right response, and the other is called Argentina:

In a story that may provide a lesson for Europe, one country, Uruguay, that was on the edge of financial oblivion organized a fast, orderly and negotiated response that revived the economy and ended a run on banks. Another, Argentina, spiraled into a chaotic default and remains a pariah in world financial markets.

Forero explains that Uruguay is now "a darling of Wall Street" (he means that in a good way) and boasts a fast-growing economy.  And what about Argentina, that pariah state? The news is grim--the government

still owes about $15 billion to hard-core creditors and has lost judgments in U.S. courts to pay up. With the country still blocked from tapping international capital markets, it is mostly because of booming demand for its agricultural products that Argentina has been lifted from economic calamity.

"Nobody recommends the Argentine approach to anything," said Arturo Porzecanski, a Uruguayan economist and professor of international finance at American University.

The Argentine people seem to think their approach is working--they just re-elected Cristina Kirchner, thanks in no small measure to the booming economy. As economist Mark Weisbrot wrote just before the election in the Guardian (10/22/11):

Since Argentina defaulted on $95bn of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well. For the years 2002-2011, using the IMF's projections for the end of this year, Argentina has chalked up real GDP growth of about 94 percent. This is the fastest economic growth in the Western Hemisphere--about twice that of Brazil, for example, which has also improved enormously over past performance. Since President Fernandez or her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president, were running the country for eight of these nine years, it shouldn't be surprising that voters will reward her with another term.

The benefits of growth don't always trickle down, but in this case, the Argentine government has made sure that many did. Poverty and extreme poverty have been reduced by about two-thirds since their peak in 2002, and employment has increased to record levels. Social spending by the government has nearly tripled in real terms. In 2009, the government implemented a cash transfer program for children that now reaches the households of more than 3.5 million children. It is probably the largest such program, relative to national income, in Latin America.

In short, the Post seems to be saying that it's better to be loved by Wall Street than to fall into an Argentine trap of growth and a substantial reduction in poverty.

Corporate media's incredibly uncritical boosterism of so-called "free trade" deals has been remarked on many times, and continues to be remarkable.

What else but blind faith would allow a story to carry a line like one in the October 12 New York Times, about textile industry opposition to the new deal with South Korea: "The production of shirts and sheets has shifted steadily from the United States to countries with lower-cost labor. Economists argue that this process strengthens the economy as companies and workers shift to more productive and lucrative kinds of work." Of course, if the Times has evidence of laid off textile workers' mass movement to more lucrative work, they're sitting on the scoop of the century.

Elite media's presentation of deals like those just passed with South Korea, Colombia and Panama consists of a barrage of unchecked claims: This time around, those featured funny numbers from proponents, who spoke of increased export growth without talking about imports--kind of like giving half a baseball score--and misleading context, like setting the deals within a storyline about jobs when there's no evidence such deals promote them.

Then you get a line, like that in the October 13 New York Times, once the deals have passed and been heralded as a "rare moment of bipartisan accord," that "the passage of the trade deals is important primarily as a political achievement, and for its foreign policy value in solidifying relationships with strategic allies. The economic benefits are projected to be small."

Some would call that bait and switch. For the corporate press on trade deals, it's standard operating procedure.

The Washington Post's Juan Forero comments today (6/30/11) on how Hugo Chavez's illness means that he's off television:

Chavez governs like the host of a reality show, cameras always rolling as he presides over summits, hectors opponents and warns of diabolical American plots to unseat him.

Wherever would he get such ridiculous ideas.

Two elections, different outcomes, different headlines at the Wall Street Journal (6/6/11).

When the left loses:

Portugal Decisively Ends Leftist Rule

Portugal on Sunday voted decisively to end six years of leftist rule, electing the country's main conservative party and boosting prospects for austerity measures tied to a $114 billion aid package from the EU and IMF.

But when the left wins:

Peru Votes in Divisive Runoff for President

Voters in one of the world's most dynamic economies went to the polls Sunday to choose between two divisive presidential candidates.

The latter piece included this:  "Financial markets, which have been riding a roller coaster during the long campaign, would be almost certain to take a win by Mr. Humala badly, analysts say."

That analysis wasn't confined to Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. In today's Washington Post (6/7/11):

Peru's Path Is Question Mark as Nationalist Wins Presidential Race
Investors worry whether he will pursue leftist economic policies

And the Los Angeles Times (6/7/11):

Leftist's Victory Rattles Peruvian Stock Market
After his narrow win, Ollanta Humala seeks to reassure the business class, but his previous pledge to work for better distribution of the nation's silver and gold wealth sends the market down more than 12 percent.

Viewing elections through the eyes of the investor class might be helpful for some, but it's doubtful that it's a great way to understand what the people in any country are thinking.

Washington Post editorialist Lee Hockstader wrote a puff profile on Haiti's thuggish President-elect Michel Martelly ("Haiti's 'Sweet Micky' Martelly Turns Presidential," 4/24/11), whom he depicts as

a fresh, vital force on the political scene, bringing with him energy and a new (mostly untested) crop of advisers, unbeholden to any recent political establishment. Little wonder that in the runoff election, Martelly, who is 50, beat a professorial 70-year-old former first lady 2 to 1.

How can you write about Martelly's run-off "victory" without noting that both rounds of the election had historically low turnout--not just for Haiti, but for the Western Hemisphere? According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (4/5/11), which follows Haiti closely, Martelly "won only 4.6 percent of the electorate in the first round and 16.7 percent in the second round." There is indeed "little wonder" that even a candidate with ties to the bloody Duvalier dictatorship who promises to restore the hated Haitian army can get that much support.

Speaking of Duvalier, Hockstader includes the usual spurious equation of the dictator with twice-deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calling both "divisive former presidents who have recently returned to Haiti from exile and who might face prosecution." In the most recent election he was allowed to participate in, Aristide got 92 percent of the vote with a 68 percent turnout. So who's really the "divisive" president?
UPDATE: The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organization, calculated the turnout for the 2000 election at 78 percent, which may be a more accurate number.

Here is Michel Martelly, one of the two conservative candidates vying to be next president of Haiti, courtesy of Kim Ives in an Institute for Public Accuracy release:

In the years following Aristide's restoration to power in 1994, Martelly became obsessed with hatred for the man. In a video from not too long ago, which can be seen on YouTube, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. "All those shits were Aristide's faggots," he says. "I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass."... [Video]

The New York Times has a profile today (3/18/11) of Martelly which alludes to this video--while omitting the worst part. The piece is headlined "A Roguish Candidate Taps Haitians' Discontent."  The Times' take on the video is that Martelly "describes a sex act he would perform on a former president whose politics he disliked." The piece goes on to refer to Martelly's opinion of Aristide as "the popular former priest and two-time president he so obscenely dismissed."

He said he wanted to kill him--that's more than an obscene dismissal.

In another Times piece on Haiti, the paper calls Aristide a "former firebrand priest beloved by the poor but dismissed by others as corrupt," before drawing this equivalence:

He will be the second polarizing figure in Haitian politics to return in recent months: Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former dictator known as Baby Doc, suddenly returned from exile in January and is living quietly here while courts iron out pending human rights and corruption charges related to his government.

As we pointed out before, comparing Aristide's human-rights record to Duvalier's bloody reign is obscene.

CNN/Time pundit Fareed Zakaria is considered one of the smartest guys in elite policy/media circles. Speaking with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Friday (3/4/11), he advocated CIA intervention in Libya. Deriding a no-fly zone as something less than a "magic solution," he explained:

 ZAKARIA: There's a lot of covert stuff we can do. We can effectively fund the Contra war against Gadhafi the way we did in Afghanistan.

COOPER: So you think the opposition should be armed?

ZAKARIA: I think the opposition--I think that the CIA should start looking into covert actions that can fund the rebels, that can provide food, logistics, weaponry. And if Khadafy Gadhafi realizes this-- and believe me, we don't need to advertise it -- he would realize, he will see, the people around him will see he can't win.

Zakaria's historical references are a little bizarre. The U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua were a disaster--a murderous group trained and armed in an attempt to overthrow a left-wing government that had overthrown a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The Contras directed much of their violence against Nicaraguan civilians. When direct funding of the group was blocked by Congress, the Reagan administration hatched a plan to sell arms to Iran and funnel the profits to the Contras--what became known as the Iran/Contra scandal. In other words, not exactly the kind of plan one would cite as a model.

Zakaria refers to Afghanistan as well--presumably meaning U.S. support for mujaheddin fighters battling the Soviet Union. Some of those fighters would eventually regroup under the banner of Al-Qaeda. Again, not really the kind of project you'd want to replicate.

It was certainly surprising to see former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier return to the country on January 16. To say he has blood on his hands is an understatement--the Duvalier regimes were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and widespread abuse, and stole millions of dollars from the country.

Soon thereafter, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide announced his intention to return to his country. Aristide, twice elected and twice removed from office, remains a popular figure in Haitian politics. His first stint in office was remarkably peaceful; his second, during which he faced armed attacks that eventually succeeded in overthrowing his government, was scarcely more violent. But some media accounts are expressing concern about Aristide's return, in effect equating him with the bloody Duvalier.

USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham wrote a piece on February 8 headlined "U.S. Meekly Allows Despots to Return to Haiti." Wickham recounts the horrors of Duvalier's reign of terror, but for some unfathomable reason decides that Aristide poses some comparable menace to Haiti--his return might "push Haiti closer to turmoil," and the two of them are "old troublemakers from returning at a time when Haiti's democracy is most vulnerable to the havoc they almost certainly will produce."

Wickham seems mostly concerned about democracy:

With another round of voting scheduled for March 20, the thing Haiti needs more than anything else now is a level of stability and calm. But what it's likely to get once Aristide returns--and once he and Duvalier rally their old supporters to their side--will be a return to the bloody factionalism that punctuated their time at the helm of Haiti's government.

It might be worth pointing out that Aristide's Lavalas party--still enormously popular--was banned from participating in last year's election, which as a result had the lowest turnout of any election held in the Western Hemisphere in the last 60 years.

The Duvalier = Aristide equation could be seen elsewhere. A New York Times report (2/9/11) warned that "experts inside and outside Haiti fear that the presence of the two former leaders could further destabilize the country." The Times went on to note that "members of the international community expressed concern that Mr. Aristide...could create widespread instability at a precarious moment." The story does note that Aristide was "beloved by the poor but criticized by many"--given Haiti's massive poverty, it's hard to know what to make of that.

A short Los Angeles Times piece (2/8/11) conveyed a similar message: Aristide "has broad popular support but remains a polarizing figure in Haiti." That article also equated Duvalier and Aristide, reporting that "the return of the two former leaders comes at an unsteady moment for the country."

One would hope reporters could find a way to make a meaningful distinction between a ruthless, bloody dictator and a popular elected president. It is obscene to refer to them both as "leaders" or, as the USA Today headline put it,  "despots."

Today's New York Times (12/20/10) brings the latest from the WikiLeaks cables, an interesting piece about how Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) went to Honduras after the coup to praise the new government and hopefully arrange business deals for his friends.

Unfortunately the Times bungles the story of the coup itself:

Honduras had grabbed international headlines starting in June 2009, when its president at the time, Manuel Zelaya, was detained and then sent into exile, based on a fear by other elected officials there that he was scheming to remain in office despite a one-term limit in Honduras’ Constitution.

Mr. Rohrabacher, challenging the stand taken by some Obama administration officials, ridiculed suggestions that Mr. Zelaya's removal was a coup d'état, and used his visit to Honduras to praise government leaders there who played roles in removing Mr. Zelaya, including members of the Supreme Court and the president of the Honduran Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández.

This is pretty typical--presenting the coup from the point of view of coup defenders and promoters, who had "a fear" that Zelaya was "scheming" to extend his term.

If the Times was really interested in what WikiLeaks tells us about Honduras, they could report--as Robert Naiman did here--that U.S. officials in the country had determined soon after the coup that the arguments being made to defend its legitimacy were without merit.

Back to the Times article, which allowed Rohrabacher to portray himself as a guy standing up for freedom and democracy, as he is wont to do:

Mr. Rohrabacher, who was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as the United States financed "freedom fighters" in Central America to challenge a perceived communist threat, has long cast himself as a defender of democratic causes in the region. The turn of events in Honduras offered him a chance to return to that role.

"He warned at the danger of allowing 'caudillos' or strongmen, like Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to assume control," the State Department summary of his visit said, recalling his remarks to the new leaders in Honduras.

So a guy who worked for Reagan is positioning himself as a defender of democratic freedom in Latin America--by supporting a coup against an elected president.  Are readers supposed to be laughing at Rohrabacher's hypocrisy, or at the Times for presenting this drivel without challenging it?

New York Times (12/3/10):

Mr. Karzai first burst onto the international stage in the style of Che Guevara, slipping over the Afghan border from Pakistan in 2001 as United States forces pounded the Taliban, before being installed by the West. President George W. Bush invited him to his first State of the Union speech after September 11, 2001, where Mr. Karzai sat in the audience as a symbol of heroes who emerged from the terrorist attacks.

Yep, just like Che--you remember when he was installed into power by the U.S., and then invited to the State of the Union address.

The emerging hero of the Chilean miners' story--in Latin America and elsewhere, if not in the U.S.--is Luis Urzúa, a topographer who took a job at the San José mines as a shift foreman while awaiting the start of new a job in his field.  NASA officials working on the rescue called Urzúa "a natural leader," but his most important accomplishment was getting the 33 miners through the first 17 days of their crisis, when all they had was enough food for two days, dirty water and no idea if a rescue effort was even underway.

Besides implementing food rationing and a 24-hour watch to listen for rescuers, Urzúa is credited with unifying the men and mediating conflicts in the desperate situation. As a topographer, Urzúa also had technical expertise useful to the rescue team. He was the last miner to be brought up because of his value to the effort.

Urzúa, whose father was a Communist leader murdered by the Pinochet regime, and whose stepfather, a Socialist mining union leader, was in turn killed by anti-left government violence, explained his leadership approach to London's Guardian:

Speaking from a hospital bed at the San José mine, shift foreman Luis Urzúa--the man who kept the Chilean miners alive for two months--said his secret for keeping the men bonded and focused on survival was majority decision-making.

"You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy," said Urzúa, his eyes hidden behind black glasses.... "Everything was voted on.... We were 33 men, so 16 plus one was a majority."

So the hero of our story, a mine foreman, says he discarded corporate, top-down decision-making in favor of workplace democracy.

As we pointed out earlier, Daniel Henninger's Wall Street Journal column, "Capitalism Saved Miners," forgot to mention that a reckless capitalist company put the miners in their predicament in the first place, and that government played a far larger role in their rescue than did capitalism.

Urzúa's story further detracts from Henninger's thesis, for unless capitalism and its anti-democratic decision-making processes have radically changed in the last two months, Henninger's hallowed system played no role in getting the miners through the toughest  part of their ordeal.

After the miners' rescue Wednesday, talk in Chile turned to mine safety and the  conduct of Compañía Minera San Esteban, the corporation that owns the San Jose mines where the miners were trapped. On Thursday, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera publicly addressed safety issues,  vowing "fundamental changes in how businesses treat their workers."

Stories about San Esteban's horrible record are legion (e.g., here and here). The company has been host to a number of deaths at its mines in recent years, and accusations of safety violations including the charge that it ignored orders to install safety equipment--a condition of its reopening after a previous accident--which might have made an earlier escape possible for some miners.

Moreover, during the debacle, San Esteban, which played no part in the miners' rescue, pled poverty and claimed it could not pay the trapped miners wages. As London's Independent reported, San Esteban "says it has no money to continue paying their wages, let alone cope with the lawsuits that will inevitably arise from the ordeal."

All in all, one might say it wasn't an episode in which capitalism cloaked itself in glory. That is, unless one is Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page director and "Wonder Land" columnist Daniel Henninger. In his October 14 column, "Capitalism Saved the Miners: The Profit = Innovation Dynamic Was Everywhere at the Mine Rescue Site," Henninger argued that the miners owed their rescue to a special drill bit developed by a private U.S. company. That was his entire argument.

Henninger's real motive seemed to be to use the miners' rescue to rebut a bit of Obama campaign rhetoric in which the president had sarcastically dismissed notion of unqualified faith in markets:

The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper.

Henninger’s response to Obama's remark:

Uh, yeah. That's a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that's right. Ask the miners.

I'm sure the miners are thankful for the heroic drill bit, but their opinion of the role of capitalism in their debacle might be less breathless than Henninger's. Indeed, most of the miners have weighed in on the central capitalist actor in the story: At least 29 of the 33 miners' families have filed lawsuits against San Esteban.

Also inconvenient for Henninger's argument: The rescue was run by the Chilean government and its relevant ministries, not by the capitalist company. Oh, and the U.S. government's space agency, NASA, also played a crucial role, designing the rescue capsule and consulting on safety issues.

Moreover, it's worth noting that, while Chile's larger, government-owned mines have relatively good safety records, the same cannot be said for its smaller, capitalist-run mines, such as San Esteban's.

No one argues that capitalism does not produce new innovations (while sometimes stifling innovations too), but in Henninger's capitalist Wonder Land, the bad actions of capitalists, as well as the the good and vital acts of governments, are banished to the real world.

Longtime Hugo Chavez critic Jackson Diehl leads his Washington Post column today (9/27/10)

Debate in Washington about Hugo Chávez --to the extent that it exists--generally centers on whether the Venezuelan strongman is a genuine threat to the United States or a buffoonish nuisance who is best ignored.

This narrow debate over Chavez's rule in Venezuela is something FAIR has documented on the country's top op-ed pages.

Of course, Diehl's point is that Chavez is a genuine threat, so anyone who takes the other position--that he's  merely an annoying buffoon--is naive.