{"id":7454,"date":"2009-04-20T21:44:18","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T05:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7454"},"modified":"2009-04-20T21:44:18","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T05:04:06","slug":"handshakeof-doom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7454","title":{"rendered":"Handshake…of Doom!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, maybe it\u2019s just me being a fuzzy-headed liburul, but I simply don\u2019t understand the right-wing freakout over Barack Obama (gasp!)shaking Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s hand<\/a><\/em>! (Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN).<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2014 Hugo Ch\u00e1vez is a Fidel Castro wannabe, and he\u2019s rapidly moving from barely-democratic leader to authoritarian despot. Of course, that doesn\u2019t distinguish him much from, say, Vladimir Putin. ((Not that Vladimir Putin is pulling the strings in Russia now. I mean, clearly Dmitri Medvedev is his own man. Also, I hear Siberia is balmy in mid-January.)) And it makes him quite superior to our frienemies in China, not to mention everyone\u2019s buddies in Saudi Arabia. (Indeed, while Ch\u00e1vez is autocratic and anti-liberty, I haven\u2019t heard that Venezuela is engaged in torture; in that respect, at least, he\u2019s a\u00a0more ethical\u00a0leader\u00a0than George W. Bush.)<\/p>\n

But\u2026so what? Was Obama supposed to greet him with a roundhouse kick to the head? Should he have reached out his hand, but ostentatiously pulled it back and run it through his hair? Should he have given Ch\u00e1vez the stinkpalm?<\/p>\n

Well, sure, he could have done that. If he was a bully.<\/p>\n

America is far more powerful than any other country on Earth, and arguably more powerful than every other country on Earth combined. And we could leverage that power in each and every meeting with each and every leader we run into. We could try to manipulate the world like an eighth grade classroom, with us at the apex, our friends forming a ring around us, and the outcasts beaten and bloodied. That was the Bush <\/span>fils<\/em> <\/span>approach to foreign policy, and it might make you feel better, just as a bully feels better when he\u2019s on top.<\/p>\n

But glory for a bully is transitory; eventually, the rest of the class moves on from eighth grade, into a more adult world. And the bully can either grow up, and deal with others like an adult does, or he can flail about as others work together and leave him behind.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama dealt with Hugo Ch\u00e1vez like an adult. He shook his hand, was polite, listened respectfully despite disagreements, and generally behaved like we expect people older than 22 to behave. We expect customer service workers to greet angry customers politely; why would we expect less out of the leader of the free world?<\/p>\n

Will Obama\u2019s adult approach empower Ch\u00e1vez? I doubt it sincerely. And frankly, so what if it does? America has nothing to fear from Venezuela. Besides, the bully approach hasn\u2019t worked so far \u2014 Ch\u00e1vez has built his power base in no small part because he was able to rally domestic constituencies against the evil of the United States. If the U.S. is a bit less overtly evil, it undermines Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s <\/span>raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ultimately, America only needs to shun other nations if it fears engaging them. But there\u2019s not a country on the planet we really need to fear right now. A confident America doesn\u2019t treat other nations like dirt; it treats them like equals. That doesn\u2019t mean capitulating to their every whim \u2014 but it does mean that when another leader reaches out his or her hand, you take it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, maybe it\u2019s just me being a fuzzy-headed liburul, but I simply don\u2019t understand the right-wing freakout over Barack Obama (gasp!)shaking Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s hand! (Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN). Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2014 Hugo Ch\u00e1vez is a Fidel Castro wannabe, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-obama-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}