Neither carrots nor sticks II

Further to my earlier post on Latin America, The Wall Street Journal‘s Mary O’Grady points to a good way for the U.S. to deal with loudmouth thugs like Hugo Chavez:

Hugo Chávez provoked nary a peep from the Bush administration when he recently welcomed Russian fighter jets to an air base in the state of Aragua. For a man desperate to prove his importance, nothing could have been more insulting than the yawn in Washington when the Russians touched down in Venezuela.

Indeed, which makes the American politicians who choose to pal around with Chavez’s lackeys all the more pathetic.