There’s much to say about Chavez but I’ll be brief. First, why does Fox News insist on referring to Chavez as a dictator? Chavez was repeatedly re-elected and the elections were always fair. His elections had far more legitimacy than Bush’s in ’00. So if Chavez is a “dictator” by the standards of Fox News, then what is Bush? Also, I’m not going to pretend like I know what it’s like to be a citizen who lives under his leadership. As a world citizen, however, I will not forget how he recalled his ambassador from Israel when it was ruthlessly and savagely bombing Lebanon in ’06. He had the clarity of thought to take such an important symbolic action when neighboring Arab dictators were shamefully silent.
But lest we not forget, Chavez was a politician and like all politicians, his record also has many stains. He supported Qaddafi and the Ba’ath regimes in Syria and Iraq. Though to be fair, he probably supported them more out of anti-imperialist sentiment than anything else. Speaking of which, all news media outlets should stop referring to him as anti-US. He was not anti-American, whatever that means. More accurately, he was anti-US domination of Latin America, which has been a grievance of Latin Americans for over a century. He was especially aggrieved at US foreign policy, especially since the United States attempted and failed to overthrow him in the early 2000s.
