The controversy over the handshake and smile between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez just seems to go on. This is style, pure and simple. And that seems what all the criticism is about. Obama is not the first President to greet a dictator. Here is President Bush with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan in 2005. Uzbekistan is nothing more than a warmed-over KGB state. Of course, there’s also Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. Chavez and Karimov have nothing compared to Stalin’s dirty hands. No one seems to have complained about that relationship. Sometimes it just makes sense to be cordial in international relations.
