All the anniversaries and cosmic combinations have aligned into one bloody March and a political snakepit for President Bush.
Bush talked tough Friday to mark the first anniversary of the start of the U.S. war in Iraq. He's straining to keep the coalition of the willing together now that Spain has gone Socialist and is vowing to pull out of Iraq.
Voters, reeling from Spain's worst terrorist attack, rejected Bush ally Jose Maria Aznar to lead them. Now the Socialist-led coalition vows to get Spain out of Dodge City, Iraq, unless the Bush administration agrees to an international coalition.
And if Spain's turn to the far left isn't enough to worry Bush, another anniversary came and went last week in Florida's back yard that could set his campaign on a tailspin come November. The first anniversary of Cuba's crackdown on political dissent - with 75 writers, independent journalists, librarians and human-rights activists still in prison serving sentences that average 20 years each - was the talk of Miami radio last week in a political game to connect the dots.
In Miami, all roads from hell and back lead to Fidel.
Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and now Spain. Commies, leftists and left-leaning Latin American leaders excuse Cuba's dictatorship because it suits their own geopolitical purposes to appear to stick it to Uncle Sam, even if the only ones who are really hurting are the Cubans stuck without an exit visa. Bush has promised to toughen the U.S. embargo against Cuba, but pro-free-trade Republicans in key wheat, rice and shipping states want to trade with Cuba, so Bush takes baby steps on Cuba policy.
Meanwhile, el loco in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and his mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro, have been trying to ignite nationalist hysteria with talk of imminent U.S. invasion. As if.
Chavez has gone so far as to threaten to shut off the spigot of Venezuelan oil and gas heading our way.
Castro, Chavez and Brazil's shoeshine boy, Inacio Lula da Silva, all have long links to "liberation" terrorist movements. And if there's any doubt where they're heading, the Forum of Sao Paulo, which Castro set up in the early 1990s and da Silva led, should set people straight as to these leaders' intentions.
Forum participants have included Latin American terrorist groups, such as the FARC, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Northern Ireland's IRA.
Among the forum's assertions: "NATO troops perpetrated genocide in Kosovo," and "U.S. and British forces massacred the population of Afghanistan."
If Cuba seems inconsequential, think about the China connection. China secures the contract to manage the Panama Canal and has military relations with both Cuba and Venezuela. Oh, it's now flying reconnaissance satellites in partnership with Brazil.
Spain was just the first canary extinguished in this mine.
Author: Myriam Marquez
