Iraq's gift to Latin America

Here's an interesting observation. All those anti-US, leftist, and pro-indigenous political movements taking root in Latin America would never have been allowed to grow if the US wasn't bogged down in the Neocon Wars. As the author points out, the US has a bloody history of repeated intervention there, starting with Teddy Roosevelt's "taking" of Panama:

In the decades that followed, the United States sponsored dictatorships from Cuba to Brazil, deposed governments from Chile to Guatemala, landed Marines on shores from Panama to Haiti, and thwarted the election of independent-minded leaders from Guyana to the Dominican Republic. Generations of Latin Americans grew up understanding that any challenge to US hegemony in the hemisphere would be crushed swiftly and with all necessary violence.

That has now changed so decisively that this week, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador felt moved to predict the emergence of a "socialist Latin America".

Makes sense. US intervention in the Middle East produced Bin Laden, as US intervention in Latin America has given us Hugo Chavez. Now we get to see what happens when angry Latinos grab at a chance for a little payback.