Tuesday, April 24, 2007

L. America ignored in Obama’s policy speech

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama (image) neglected to directly mention Latin America during a major foreign affairs speech made yesterday in Chicago. The Illinois Senator bemoaned “the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology” on a number of topics ranging from nuclear arms to foreign aid to the Iraq conflict.

Mind you, this does not mean that Obama has ignored Latin America altogether as he demonstrated in a speech shortly before the President’s tour of the Americas last month:

“We need to restore U.S. relations in the hemisphere. We need to consolidate the gains that have been made in the sweeping change of the last few years. We need to sustain our commitment to democracy, to social justice, and to opportunity for our neighbors to the south. The western hemisphere is too important to our core economic and security interests to be treated with the neglect and mismanagement that have defined the past six years”.

However, for him to have not explicitly mentioned the Americas in such a seemingly vital speech does raise some eyebrows. Hopefully Obama can provide more details of his views on Latin America in the weeks to come.

Links- International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, U.S. Senator Barack Obama

Image- Salon

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4 comments:

  1. Tambopaxi7:19 PM

    TLA: Hope you're right re: Obama attending more to LA in the future. We get more illegal immigrants, drugs, and political attacks on the U.S. from LA than from any other continent; and LA is closer to us physically than anywhere else. We better start paying much more attention to what's going on down here....

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  3. Anonymous11:27 AM

    I don't understand how he ignored LA, did he not say this in the actual speech (from the prepared text)?

    In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America, it’s America’s problem too.

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  4. Erwin C.10:30 PM

    Aside from drugs, immigration, and corruption there are numerous advantages to paying close attention to Latin America:

    * promote democracy
    * create and continue close economic ties
    * change U.S. foriegn policy in order to establish stronger relations
    (these are but a few examples)

    Like i said in the original post, I hope that Obama can discuss his perspective on latin america in the upcoming months. (For that matter, the same goes for the other candidates).

    ReplyDelete