Fox and hounds

Guillermo Faber (Crisol Plural, Aguascalientes), decidedly not one of the Amigos de Fox, finds something worth appreciated… Fox didn’t answer his phone when it counted:

I confirmed this with Vicente Fox himself:  despite 50 phone calls from various lackeys of the Empire (Cheney, Rice, various Bushies) demanding Mexico sign off on the adventure in Iraq, the devious Bajio rancher managed to sidestep a mega-brawl over joining in the cime against humanity very neatly.  He never took the calls.  He was in the hospital.  Hats off to Fox.  To me, it shows that he has a lot of balls (or was completely unconscious) to dis a hysterical empire at its most hysterical.

For several reasons, I’ve always had my doubts about Fox’s character, ever since he was governor of Guanajuato. But this fact alone is enough to (almost) re-claim him in my view. It doesn’t matter what I think.   I have to admit that by his single gesture (of supreme bravery or immeasurable unconscious) , Fox saved Mexico from countless misfortunes.

I happened to see Fox in public soon after his public refusal to involve Mexico in the cock-up in the middle east.  He certainly looked and moved like a guy who just had major back surgery, and tend to think his hospital stay during the build-up to the invasion was not simply a matter of evading responsibility, but was fortuitous, given Fox’s disastrous performance as a  telephone solicitations.  That would have been when Bush, sold Fox on disinviting Fidel Castro to the Monterrey Summit of the Americas.  Fox was completely at a loss when it came to projecting any semblance of sincerity in trying to sell Fidel an unreasonable proposition.  And, Fidel taped the call.

Mexico — having a lot of oil, a not very good military and a less than perfect government — certainly viewed Iraq differently than the United States did.  And, even the most geographically challenged amongst us can tell Mexico is a lot closer to the United States than Iraq is.  One of the few people I knew who supported Mexican assistance made his argument in the form of a metaphor:  “If the neighborhood loan-shark asks you to help him kill a vicious dog that scares his mother on the other side of town, you are likely to help… especially if you think you might need a loan someday… and you know he’s carrying a gun”.

Which makes one wonder:  are the gangsters Hillary Clinton likes to compare to “terror groups” the “vicious dogs” today, and is the Calderón Administration being handed a shotgun by the neighborhood loan shark and told to kill his dog that annoys the neighbor  … never mind that it’s  going to mean blasting out the front room, destroying  the TV, and leaving a load of buckshot in his granny’s backside?