trebase

Lula’s rise is stirring tale of a man who only became literate at the age of ten, never finished secondary school, and climbed from skilled metalworker and union leader to four-term president. Yet the same man has held remarkably simplistic and disturbingly misinformed political opinions. In 1979 he named among his most admired historical figures Gandhi, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, the Ayatollah Khomeini and Adolf Hitler, citing the last for his “determination.” He supported the Castro regime and, for a time, Chávez and Maduro. He gave a pass to the industrial-scale drug-smuggling routes into the United States. He bought into the left’s championship of extreme environmental views and made himself the chief spokesperson for the unutterable nonsense that Americans must pay billions in compensation for Amazon deforestation. He has clambered aboard almost any passing anti-American bandwagon joining BRICS and championing the Chinese currency while falling for the blood libel that Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre was genocidal. His verbal coziness with the criminal regime in Iran has been an unmitigated disgrace and is, in all respects, un-Brazilian. Foreign policy under Lula has been a succession of ludicrous posturing and farcical attempts, with the presidents of Turkey and Iran, to resolve complex problems that had nothing to do with Brazil. Brazil is one of the world’s most important countries and there is still room to hope that Lula's last turn will bring mature and well-considered policies. He should start by pardoning Jair Bolsonaro.