Pirate of the Caribbean

I share Publius Pundit's feeling that the headline above is one I wish I'd written about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. It appears above an article at Investors.com that points out that Chavez, like most bullies, is not loved much by those who live around him. For example:

Odd, that as "popular" as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is said to be, he's so detested by Venezuelans that he can no longer go to baseball games without being booed by the whole stadium.

Odder still, as "appealing" as Chavez is touted around the hemisphere, every politician running for office — from Ecuador to Bolivia to Mexico — has one moment where he stresses to voters that he "won't be the next Hugo Chavez."

The contradictions mean something ominous: There's a bully stalking the hemisphere, and his shadow is lengthening. The region's weakened states have well-founded fear of being Chavez's next target. He can cut off their oil. He can crush their economies. In the past two years, he's done it on a hair trigger.

He did it to Colombia this year, shutting down border trade in a dispute over the apprehension of a terrorist. Before that, he did it to the Dominican Republic, cutting off oil in a fit of pique over an asylum case. Indirectly (at the very least), he's supporting Bolivia's coca-growing roadblockers who are trying to starve Bolivian cities into submission to their demands for investment-killing taxes. That's economic warfare.

Good stuff, and there's more.