Like i just posted on
my blog, on Chavez' election down in Venezuela, where we've been meddling (just a lil') again:
The United States long ago threw its lot in with an opposition movement that is being discredited by foreign diplomats and many Venezuelans for insisting that fraud took place when the preponderance of evidence indicates it did not.
It seems the US has been meddling a little bit, though ineffectively. It's an endemic problem, I think, that our government feels it has the authority to mess around in other countries' elections. It has happened far too much, contributed to many problems we face today (terrorism, regional instability and oppressive regimes) in the world, and as there is no Cold War going on, no overarching justification (not that it does justify it) for doing so. If we, as the model democracy, manipulate other democracies and bend the rules etc., we don't exactly set a good example. Our foreign policy needs to get away from this mentality, because it hurts America in the long term.