|
...using the FARC (armed leftist guerillas) in Colombia as the excuse. I remember when they did it (added "terrorism" to "Plan Colombia" in 2008). But the FARC are a domestic phenomenon--one side of 70 YEAR civil war. They are NOT stateless, international "terrorists." They are Colombians with legitimate grievances against the fascist oligarchy that has not only impoverished the majority of Colombians (Colombia has one of the worst rich/poor discrepancies in the region) but has MURDERED thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, peasant farmers and others and has displaced 5 MILLION peasant farmers from their lands. This has been going on for 7 decades and the last time the FARC disarmed and tried to join the political process, some 5,000 of their political candidates and political organizers and supporters were murdered by the Colombian elite's rightwing death squads. Talk about "terrorism"!
Furthermore, according to Amnesty International and other analysts, the Colombian military and its closely tied paramilitary death squads are responsible for MOST of the carnage in Colombia (92% of the murders of trade unionists, for instance). The FARC may commit crimes (mostly kidnapping and drug trafficking) but the Colombian military commits worse crimes (mass murder).
What you have here is a CIVIL WAR--Colombians killing Colombians. And what the Bushwhacks' "terrorism" designation did was to put the U.S. on ONE SIDE of this civil war with NO ROOM FOR SETTLING IT. They escalated U.S. participation on one side of this civil war, with $7 BILLION in U.S. military funding to a government and military with one of the worst human rights records on earth, and, if my suspicions are correct, were using Colombia as a "laboratory" to train death squads for Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bushwhacks significantly escalated the mayhem in Colombia AND deliberately foreclosed regional efforts at a peace settlement (for instance, with the U.S/Colombia. bombing/raid on Ecuador in 2008, killing the FARC hostage and peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, and 24 other sleeping people at a FARC temporary hostage release camp just inside Ecuador's border). The Bushwhacks also supported the death squad and drug trafficking-connected Alvaro Uribe (former "go to" guy for the Medellin Cartel) who stated publicly that all who oppose him are "terrorists"--a signal to the rightwing death squads that anybody--judges, prosecutors, academics, journalists, political opponents and all of the above, including trade unionists, were "fair game." And, among other things, the Bushwhacks very likely also provided technical expertise for Uribe's massive and illegal domestic spying program.
That is likely why the Obama administration and the CIA have facilitated the exit from Colombia of death squad and spying witnesses, by means of extradition and asylum, over the vociferous objections of Colombian prosecutors; why they facilitated the secret signing of the Bushwhack-negotiated Colombia/U.S. military agreement that granted "total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia, and why they are coddling and honoring Uribe--to protect the Bush Junta criminals, especially Junior, from war crimes charges in Colombia. The Democrats (B. Clinton) may have started "Plan Colombia," but the Bushwhacks escalated it to an all-out war on the Left and on the poor majority in Colombia AND in the region.
The Bushwhacks were using the "war on drugs" as a war PLAN, ultimately aimed at toppling the leftist governments next door--Venezuela and Ecuador--and regaining control of their oil (the profits from which are currently being "wasted" on education, health care and other bootstrapping of the poor). And Evo Morales is right that the armed resisters in Colombia's 70-year civil war were the convenient "excuse" to change the "war on drugs" into the "war on terror"--the excuse for SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia (part of the same agreement with the "total diplomatic immunity" provision), the excuse for reconstituting the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, for USAF bases on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast and for many other militaristic actions in Latin America, probably including the U.S.-instigated "war on drugs" mayhem in Mexico (one the Bush Junta's last acts in office) and the plotting of the Honduran rightwing coup d'etat (which unfolded six months into the Obama administration, with the U.S. military base in Honduras aiding the coup). One of the coup generals even stated that the purpose of their coup was "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States."
The U.S. should LONG AGO have forced Colombia's fascist elite to the peace table. Instead, we have been massively abetting their war on their own people, in the interest of multinational corporate and war profiteer GREED.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
