http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aun_fNO0161g

After all the years of American financial and social help to the entire world, including Latin America, our neighbors to the south still face multiple issues… all related to poverty and the harsh rule of dictators .

And, as happened in Europe, America has once again tried to make everything right and everyone happy, but no one is ever satisfied with our help.  We send money and are accused of trying to buy friends.   We send troops to help them quell insurgencies and are accused of colonialism.  We send Peace Corps and, in many cases, the insurgents take these volunteers as hostages.  Is there anything that America can do to change this situation?

My answer is that we have to stop trying to buy friends.  Thanks to the Marshall plan, Europe and Japan were rebuilt after WWII, even though we were not the aggressors in this war. Thanks to our massive influx of money and medical aid in Africa, many Africans are still living, despite being infected with AIDS.  But, are we thanked?  No, we are accused of not doing enough.

President Obama is the least experienced president we have ever elected, but hopefully, he will learn.  If he wants to learn from history , this should be his first lesson!  Do not expect to BUY friends and influence other countries.  History will repeat itself until we learn that these countries take the money and run back to their own hidey-hole.  Unfortunately, Obama’s “mea culpa” attitude is allowing the rest of the world to blame the United States for every problem everywhere!  Even  the leaders south of the border are taking this opportunity to once again take the money with one hand and criticize America with the other.  When will we finally stop apologizing for our success and tell the rest of the world to straighten out and help themselves?  Unfortunately,  Obama did NOT learn this on his first trip to Europe.  Will he learn from his Latin American trip?     Well, it doesn’t look like likely.  Here’s what the Latin America leaders had to say about their wonderfully generous neighbor, the United States:

Obama Gets History Lesson From Latin American Leaders (Update1)

By Helen Murphy and Joshua Goodman

April 18 (Bloomberg) — Latin American leaders railed against the U.S. during President Barack Obama’s first trip to the region, turning what was intended to mark a new direction in relations into a history lesson that chastised “Yankee troop” interventions and U.S.-dictated economic policies.