The Wall Street Journal is after Hugo Chavez. Last week, at a speech before the U.N. General Assembly, President Chavez repeatedly referred to President Bush as "the devil." He was congratulated on his speech by such credible figures as Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Problem is, I agree with this WSJ op-ed from Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a scholar at the Independent Institute, a right-wing think tank. This is not because I have a vendetta against Chavez for criticizing Bush. This is because Vargas Llosa's criticisms of Chavez are right on-target.

Vargas Llosa parallels Dante's Inferno -- which is about Dante's trip through the nine circles of hell -- with Chavez's own "Inferno." It is true that Chavez has no credibility to assume a higher moral standing than President Bush. While Chavez isn't guilty of starting a war in Iraq (which makes him pretty popular in some circles), neither is he guilty of supporting freedom of speech and the press. Chavez is known, as Vargas Llosa tells us, for pressuring national media companies to write nice things about him. People who protest against him -- or even write unflattering op-eds for national newspapers -- find themselves suddenly imprisoned. Chavez is not only bosom buddies with Fidel Castro, but also Cuba's secret police and spy networks.

As I've written before, this sort of crackdown on what we would call First Amendment rights is astonishing coming from a country that wants to be seen as a democracy. While Western democracies like France, England, and Spain (which are still among the dominant diplomatic powers in the world) certainly disagree with the United States on a number of things -- and have an equal disdain for Bush -- they will not high-five Chavez for his remarks. They are undoubtedly as perplexed by Chavez as some observers in the United States are, and I hope that they take a dim view of Chavez's human rights abuses and resist giving him any credibility in the world until he makes his country truly a democracy.