It's a little bit snarky, but intriguing nonetheless. Listen to this:

Now is the time for Brazil, the "sleeping giant," to display its would-be power by taking a more aggressive lead in Haiti. If it truly wants to challenge US dominance in the hemisphere and create a new regional order with itself as leader, it can't passively hide behind failing OAS diplomacy...

He shouldn't wait for France, the US, or even the United Nations to send in "a buffer force" to protect the embattled Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. With a phone call to the other regional power, Mexico, he could gather enough troops together within days and, with a US airlift, put boots on the ground in Haiti.

The Monroe Doctrine, which has let the US treat Latin America as its own backyard, is now ripe for a challenge.

Will Brazil take that challenge?

The Monitor, no friend of Brazil or of democracy in Latin America (it generally takes its lead on covering these stories from shifty Michael Shifter of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the least trustworthy and hostile-to-democracy media manipulators out there), may be setting a trap here. Still, I must admit we've been discussing the same scenario around the Narco Newsroom in recent days.

For example, it would be natural, if Brazil did take this kind of lead, to recruit well-trained police from Venezuela, and troops from Argentina, to help with such a mission... and it would make the best strategic sense to utilize nearby Cuba as a Forward Operating Location. But if Brazil got too far out ahead of the OAS in answering Haiti's plea for help, would the Bush Administration then try to manipulate a backlash?

The Monitor editorial seems to presume that the U.S. would offer an "airlift" to such an operation. Do the editorial writers know something that nobody in Washington has openly suggested? In any case, Brazil - one of the world leaders in aerospace manufacturing - counts with a significant Air Force of its own, too.

Developing...