Biden goes to Latin American amid drug debate
Biden goes to Latin American amid drug debate
Published: 12:30 pm
Updated: 12:38 pm
Vice President Joe Biden heads to Latin America this Sunday amid unprecedented pressure from political and business leaders to talk about something U.S. officials have no interest in debating: decriminalizing drugs.
Presidents of Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and Mexico, all grappling with the extremely violent fallout of a failing drug war, have said in recent weeks they'd like to open up the discussion of legalizing drugs. Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Mexico already allow the use of small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption, while political leaders from Brazil and Colombia are discussing alternatives to locking up drug users.
Business leaders are weighing in as well: in February, a group of banking, medical and legal experts sponsored a drug policy conference in Mexico City which concluded that current drug control policies aren't working and need reform.
"It's a different moment when you have actual heads of state talking about the need for a thorough debate on this," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent think tank. "It's certainly different for sitting presidents to be uttering those words. You wouldn't have thought it possible just a few years ago."
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This is yet another example of how stupid-making our Corporate 'News' Machine is! I keep up on news about LatAm yet even I had only noticed a couple of items on this subject: the former Mexican presidents' commission (which recommended legalization of marijuana and re-thinking the entire "war on drugs"
and the surprising recent statements of the president of Colombia (of all countries) and the president of Guatemala favoring legalization. Now it turns out that, "suddenly," NUMEROUS, CURRENT heads of state in Latin America, plus "banking, medical and legal experts" are questioning the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs."
And Joe Biden is rushing south to try to save our war profiteers, in the face of this rebellion!
Fancy that! I wonder what "muscle" he will be using to strongarm, threaten, bribe and bludgeon these uppity LatAm leaders back into the war profiteer fold?
The U.S. "war on drugs" has important dimensions in LatAm beyond its obvious corruption and murderousness, and its failure. Above all, it is a sovereignty issue in LatAm, which became quite obvious during the Bush Junta, which was using the DEA, for instance, to foment a rightwing (and white racist) coup in Bolivia and used the Pentagon's base in Manta, Ecuador (supposedly a drug surveillance base) to send either a pilot and plane, or a drone, to drop 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on Ecuador (to wipe out a FARC hostage negotiation camp, without Ecuador's permission). The latter action nearly started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela. In short, the U.S. utilizes the "war on drugs" to put boots on the ground in LatAm countries, for spying, to aid rightwing coup plots, to cause trouble, to control these countries and soften them up for U.S. "free trade for the rich" (for instance, by murdering trade unionists in Colombia), to infuse billions of our tax dollars into the most fascist elements of LatAm society and for Pentagon war planning across the "global south" from Africa to Asia (according to a U.S. Air Force document uncovered by Eva Golinger).
There is no more sensitive and important issue in LatAm than the sovereignty of LatAm countries, and the U.S. has violated their sovereignty, big time, with this terrible "war." The U.S. "war on drugs" is also used for propaganda purposes, and here the Obama administration comes into the picture, with its utterly hypocritical bullshit about LEFTIST governments that the U.S. particularly wants to topple "not cooperating" in the "war on drugs"--notably Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. All three have had more success at nailing BIG drug lords once they threw the U.S. war profiteers out of their countries than they ever did before. But, of course, THAT ISN'T THE POINT of this kind of U.S. propaganda. U.S. war profiteers don't care, one way or the other, about the SUCCESS of the "war on drugs" in its stated purposes. What they care about is CONTROLLING these countries, i.e., empowering the fascists so that U.S.-based transglobal corporations like Exxon Mobil, Monsanto, Drummond Coal and Chiquita can rip off the natural resources and enslave the workforce.
The Obama administration has another purpose, or, how shall I describe this?...a complication in LatAm, and that is very probable Bush Junta war crimes in Colombia, and their use of the U.S. "war on drugs" not to end drug traffic but rather to consolidate the trade and to direct its trillion+ dollar cocaine revenue to certain beneficiaries. Colombian prosecutors are getting closer and closer to prosecuting Alvaro Uribe, the Bush Junta's mafia don president of Colombia, with the Obama administration trying to keep ahead of it (because of Bush Junta complicity in crimes), by removing witnesses from the country (for instance, arranging asylum for Uribe's spy chief in Panama--i.e., the head of Uribe's vast, illegal spying operation who had a liaison to the U.S. embassy--and mass extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S. while Uribe was still in power).
Biden's trip south could have something to do with these developments as well. The Obama administration has to please our war profiteers but they also have some sort of obligation to prevent Bush Junta principles from being prosecuted for their many crimes. They've prevented prosecution, or even investigation, here, by fiat. They've prevented it among "western powers" probably by helping them gain control of Libya's oil. They have a policy, stated by Obama, that "we need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the very rich and powerful.
It's quite interesting that their CIA Director (now at the Pentagon), Leon Panetta, is a Bush SENIOR crony (member of Bush Sr's "Iraq Study Group" and probably "old CIA" and his first visible action as CIA Director was to go to Bogota! The occasion was likely the rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power. That would have been uniquely embarrassing to the U.S., so Uribe was yanked from the stage and given a soft landing (academic sinecures at Harvard and Georgetown, among other things). On the surface, this appeared to have something to do with Uribe's warmongering against Venezuela (change of policy by Obama?), but underneath the surface I think it had quite a bit to do with Uribe's ties to Bush Jr and likely U.S. crimes in Colombia during Uribe's tenure in power.
Colombia is the "poster child" for how big a failure the U.S. "war on drugs" is. Mexico is more immediately spectacular (50,000 murders since the Bush Junta dumped "war on drugs" billions into Mexico's fascist establishment, in 2008), but, long term, Colombia is worse--as to the death toll as well as the utter wreckage of society. Mexico still has a chance to recover quickly. Colombia will be recovering for a hundred years--and maybe never. In Colombia, the U.S. "war on drugs" has been used to brutally displace FIVE MILLION peasant farmers, and to murder thousands of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor as well as human rights workers, journalists and other members of civil society. And the cocaine just keeps on flowing, now with entrenched criminal networks that also trade in weapons, election fraud, assassination and other crimes, and that are furthermore closely tied to a faction of the rightwing political establishment (led by Uribe, who has ambitions to return to power).
Biden may have a hard time convincing Latin American leaders that the U.S. means well with its "war on drugs." The Obama administration may not be the outright criminals that the Bush Junta principles were, on the "war on drugs," but, with the U.S. election system as it is (particularly the corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S.), the threat of a return to criminal Bush Junta rule is very real. Obama may stay in office for four more years if he's a "good boy" (keeps the lid on Bush Junta crimes, among other things)--say, long enough for the people of the U.S. to "forget" that humongously criminal regime--but if Bush Junta II occurs, Latin America will be one of its victims, and Latin American leaders are well aware of this. It's not just that the U.S. "war on drugs" is VERY BAD POLICY--failed, corrupt, murderous; it's that the U.S. "war on drugs" has been used for hideously destructive purposes. It is, in fact, a method of CONQUEST.
