First of all, let’s congratulate the winner of yesterday’s Renew America Bachelor Pageant, Judson Cox!

SC of The Girl Gets Away has graciously volunteered to take my place as Judson’s date. Judson, what do ya have to say to the lucky lady?

I’m sure you two will have lots to talk about. (Now we just need to find a date for Resa LaRu Kirkland, a.k.a., America’s War Chick! Any takers?)
Now, onto today’s business. I decided to see what our old friend Adam Yoshida’s been up to lately.

Above: The two famous Yoshis. Unlike his digital dino-counterpart, Adam pays money to get mounted by hairy Italian guys.
I wondered: has he mellowed out since Bush won the election (or is he at least less batshit loony than before)? Well, I needn’t tell you, since I think we all know the answer:

Friday, March 04, 2005

War for Oil? Possibly

It’s not widely known, but the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States is Venezuela, which, in 2003, provided a total equal to about 3/4’s of that provided by Saudi Arabia. A cut-off of oil supplies from that nation would send already-high oil prices into the stratosphere. Worse still: it’s entirely possible that, thanks to an increasingly-close relationship with China, Venezuela’s leftist President, Hugo Chavez, could cut off exports without harming his own domestic economy. In terms of ability and willingness to cause widespread harm to the United States, Chavez may be the single most dangerous enemy that America has today.

Yeah, forget al-Qaeda getting nookular weapons- a militant (but democratically elected) left-wing populist is far more dangerous.

So: what is to be done? The coup, of course, has been the traditional American means for getting rid of Latin American leaders who forget their place in the natural order of things.

“Which is leaders of swarthy, non-white, non-English-speaking backwaters who stand in the shadow of the massive U.S.A. Freedom Dong.”

This was already tried against Chavez in the spring of 2002 and horribly botched.

Or, as Adam’s animated alter ego would say:

“Worst. Overthrow. Ever.”

There were three major reasons for the failure of the coup, in my view;
First: though the plotters successfully captured Chavez they, for some insane reason, failed to immediately execute him. This, of course, allowed him to resume power once the plot had collapsed.

Executing a democratically-elected leader: now there’s a strategy toward freedom!

Second, the plotters failed to dispose of other major regime figures, most notably the Vice President.
Finally, action taken to suppress protests after the coup were weak and half-hearted. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but a coup isn’t a tea party: people have to die.

Yeesh, I had no idea The Sixth Commandment was part of a PC liberal plot to weaken America’s power. Et tu, Moses? Et tu?
At any rate, Yoshi goes on to theorize how to deal with Venezuela in the future:

Mr. Chavez appears to be the indispensable man in the regime. His assassination ought to become a paramount objective of covert US policy.

Apparently, Yoshi’s readers weren’t too amused by his “kill Chavez and any Venezuelan who stands in our way” shtick, so he wrote this follow-up post to clarify:

I think I let my hatred of Hugo Chavez get in the way.

Noooooo! You just called for his assassination! It wasn’t that bad!

But, in truth, the real point of the column wasn’t about Venezuela at all. I need not again recite my litany of complaints about that nation: it’s support for Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, its involvement in subversive activities all across South America, its alliance with China, etc (well, I guess I did just list them). The real point was to assert a fundamental doctrine: if the United States requires resources for the functioning of its economy and others seek to deliberately deny them access to those resources then the United States has the right to take them, by force if necessary.

This is known around the Yoshida household as the “Cupcake Doctrine”- when Adam’s mom bakes cupcakes, Adam has the right to eat them all (even though the rest of his family is hungry)- by force if necessary.
Y’know, I’m agnostic now, but I was raised Christian. One of the things I learned during my time in church is that no matter how much you disagree with someone’s ideas or opinions, it’s wrong to hate them as people. So as much as I make fun of Kaye Gorgan or JB Williams, I think on a personal level, they’re probably decent folks.
Let’s just say I don’t feel the same way about Adam Yoshida.
Unlike the other 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Yoshi doesn’t even live in America, and will never get drafted to fight the wars he supports. In fact, he doesn’t even deserve to be a member of the 101st Keyboarders- Yoshi’s nothing more than a Keyboard Mountie. And I think we can all agree, folks: that really sucks.
Or, as Glenn Reyonlds said a while back, “ADAM YOSHIDA is a Harvard blogger with some interesting observations on the war.”
Heh. Indeed.