Posted on 03/28/2009 8:14:51 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
US Vice President Joe Biden said that the United States would no longer "dictate unilaterally" to Latin America, and that it had entered a new era in the historically troubled relationship.
"The time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk and don't listen is over," Biden said in Santiago after holding discussions with a clutch of Latin American leaders at a conference at a Chilean beach resort.
Biden's five-day visit to meet leaders in the region, including a second stop in Costa Rica, aimed to pave the way for President Barack Obama, who is set to attend the Summit of the Americas next month in Trinidad and Tobago.
"My visit here is just the beginning of a renewal of a partnership with the Americas. In the past, even when we engaged positively we tended to engage 'for' the (western) hemisphere. We're not engaging 'for,' this is 'with,'" Biden added.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hailed the new US administration's "genuine wish to play a proactive and decisive role in the construction of a new world dialogue."
Biden's trip came as decades-long US influence in the region is waning, while Latin American countries have grown stronger and expanded relations with others, including China, Russia and India.
The US vice president met with the heads of state of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile during a two-day Progressive Governance conference focused on the financial crisis in Vina del Mar.
At the summit, Biden also reiterated that the Obama administration supported a change in policy toward age-old foe Cuba.
But he added: "We think the Cuban people should determine their own fate and that they should be able to live in freedom and with some prospect of economic prosperity."
Recent changes to US laws loosened some restrictions on commerce with the ailing communist island and eased travel rules for Cubans living in the United States, but fell short of calls to lift an entire decades-old US embargo.
Biden is due to fly to Costa Rica Sunday, where he will meet with President Oscar Arias and other Central American leaders before returning to Washington on Monday.
Despite new ties beyond the continent, Latin America is still the largest foreign oil supplier to the United States, its fastest-growing trading partner and biggest supplier of illegal drugs.
Wouldn’t want to threaten the cocaine supply.
Of course not. They will be completely occupied with the task of dictating to the American people.
No. With the stunning success of their socialist countries and the prosperity and productivity therein, they’ll be dictating to us. Change, ya see?
Joe is terribly slow after having unsuccessful brain surgery three times you know.
All this talk about not listening from a guy who never shuts up!
Dictators of the world must be Twitter-ing each other about their good fortune in having these two numbnuts—Obama and Biden—as America’s leaders.
After all....Joe’s daughter looooooves that ‘marching powder’! Gotta keep her in GOOD supply.
Unless people with a loud voice STAND UP.
She will have fallen without a single shot fired. (To those that are monitoring this site, that was not a threat but an observation)
Cry aloud with a mighty voice! do not let our GREAT country fail!
American girls with cocaine addictions agree!
I do know that over many years we have poured billions of dollars into that part of the world and all most them did was complain. And I do know that AID (State Dept) had little to no means to perform fraud investigation.
My first thought - anything that slows down his daughter’s cocaine is off the table.
His sons also.
Yup, the brain surgeon really should’ve coordinated better with the guy who did the hair transplant plugs.
Biden is a moron, and the people who listen to him and report what he says uncritically are morons too.
In the last several years, Venezuela has forced oil companies to give way on major contracts, to the point that some of them have been forced out of the country. Who is dictating unilaterally to who? Chavez has refused any and all military cooperation, he is backing the FARC against Colombia, and lending direct aid to our enemies here and around the world. We've done nothing to stop him.
Ecuador kicked Occidental Oil out of the country, and we've done nothing in response. Who is dictating unilaterally to who? We have been ordered to vacate the air base we built in Manta, and we're doing it. Again, who dictates to who?
El Universal (Mexico City) 3/26/09
* A meeting by some Central American countries’ heads of state has been taking place in Managua, Nicaragua. There, the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, stated that “to emigrate is a human right and not a crime and we’re going to ask him (Vice Pres. Biden) that the issue of “migrants be removed from the security agenda and that it be moved to the development agenda.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2217208/posts
Obama’s people NEVER tire of running down their own country, often through the creation of straw men. As a veteran US diplomat, I can say we ALWAYS LISTENED to what Latin Americans said. We just did not DO everything they wanted us to do: open our borders to unlimited immigration by armies of illiterate peasants let down by their own corrupt governments, dump the Israelis, play nice with Castro. Biden and Hillary’s attacks on their own country’s diplomatic history will only encourage foreign countries’ contempt for us. And set them up for disappointment: even Obama won’t be able to do EVERYTHING Latins want—there will be no free trade agreement with Colombia, for starters. Our unions don’t want it and it looks like they will hold a veto over US trade policy.
Metaphor clean-up in aisle 8, please.
The List, ping
These piddly farts, 0 and Plugs, just want to be American dictators, Hitleresque, Nazi wannabes, forging their Third World here.
Ping!
It’s a nightmare to know this guy is running off at the mouth 24 hours a day. Heaven knows what he is saying to foreign leaders that doesn’t make the news
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