SF Chronicle : Chavez savages Bush in speech

Chavez savages Bush in speech

Diplomats at U.N. applaud his attack on U.S. policy

Colum Lynch | Washington Post | September 21, 2006

(09-21) 04:00 PDT United Nations -- Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's combative president, blasted President Bush on Wednesday in a U.N. speech as a racist, imperialist devil who has devoted six years in office to military aggression and the oppression of the world's poorest people.

Speaking from the podium where President Bush spoke a day earlier, Chavez said he could still smell the sulfur -- a reference to the scent of Satan. Even by U.N. standards, where the United States is frequently criticized as the world's superpower, Chavez's anti-American remarks were exceptionally inflammatory. They were also received with a warm round of applause.

Chavez's address followed of series of strident speeches by U.S. adversaries, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir. Together, they represented an emboldened alliance of oil-rich states who defied U.S. demands to change their policies on a range of issues, including the development of nuclear technology and the role of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

"Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world," Chavez told the chamber of international diplomats. "I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."

Bush administration officials dismissed Chavez's remarks as the ravings of a reckless political leader. "I'm not going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president towards the United States," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "I think it's not becoming for a head of state."

In an effort to bolster his case, Chavez waved a copy of Noam Chomsky's book "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination," and recommended that everyone read it. The book, written by the American linguist and longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, argues that the U.S. pursuit of political supremacy is having devastating consequences for the majority of the world's people. After the speech, the book's hourly sales ranking on Amazon.com soared to No. 22 as of 6 p.m. Wednesday, from No. 160,772 earlier in the day, according to CNN.

"The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world," Chavez said. "What would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? ... I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, 'Yankee imperialist, go home.'

"The world is waking up. I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism."

Chavez's U.N. appearance is part of a Venezuelan campaign to gain election to the Latin American seat on the U.N. Security Council, a post that would place it in a position to challenge U.S. policies. The United States, which vigorously opposes Venezuela's candidacy, is supporting a competing bid for the post by Guatemala, a poor Central American republic with little political influence at the United Nations.

In portraying the United States as an imperial power, Chavez sought to evoke memories of the Cold War, when Third World revolutionaries such as Cuban President Fidel Castro (an ally and mentor of Chavez) and Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe delivered scathing attacks on the United States.

U.N. experts said that while Chavez's speech may resonate with delegations who oppose a new world order built around U.S. power, it was so undiplomatic that it might undermine his chances of getting into the Security Council.

It "confirms the worst stereotypes about the U.N. General Assembly being a circus sideshow filled with venom and rabid anti-Americanism," said Edward Luck, an expert on the United Nations at Columbia University. "I never thought anyone could make Ahmadenijad look like a moderate, but Chavez has done it."

While Chavez is renowned for his caustic views of the Bush administration, some senior U.N. diplomats were startled by his statement. Asked if Chavez had gone too far, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhao Xing said: "He really said that? Are you sure? He would go that far?"

Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett suggested that the Chavez comments went beyond the pale of diplomatic protocol at the United Nations. "Even the Democrats wouldn't say that," she said.