The U.S. invested billions in ESCALATING Colombia's chronic civil war INTO A BLOODBATH against trade unionists, human rights workers, peasant farmers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists and others, on behalf of Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Monsanto, Chiquita, et al, and assorted war profiteers (Dyncorp, Blackwater), and favoring the big, protected drug lords with ties to the narco-thugs running Colombia's government and military (and tied to the CIA and the Bush Cartel?).
The U.S. hugely exacerbated a chronic local conflict, used it to militarize the region and Colombia's extremely corrupt, death squad-connected leaders are now being used to flog, plot against and very likely to make war against Colombia's PEACEFUL neighbors--Venezuela and Ecuador, both with lots and lots of oil, and both with leftist governments that believe in using oil profits to benefit the poor.
This article (and do remember that it is a corpo-fascist news source) reveals this truth inadvertently. Its swipe at Chavez--that HE is the one who is "saber rattling"--the president of a PEACEFUL neighboring country who has seen the U.S. military invited to occupy bases on its border, the U.S. reconstitution of the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, the USAF ensconced on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast, the U.S. overthrow of democracy in Honduras and non-stop psyops out of Washington to try to overthrow Venezuelan democracy--was either a clever ploy to get published in a corpo-fascist newspaper or an indication of ill purpose or ambivalent purpose somewhere along the line--in the article's inception, by the writer or by the editors or the publisher.
Venezuela finds itself surrounded in an arc of new and beefed up U.S. war assets all along the border of its northern oil provinces, hanging directly over the Gulf of Venezuela (major oil facilities) not twenty miles from its border and stretching into the Caribbean around its Caribbean oil coast. And
Venezuela is "saber-rattling"?
I'm sorry but corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies don't publish articles exposing vast corruption and vast carnage paid for by the USA, without a hidden agenda. In this case, the agenda may be similar to the one in Iraq--that is, AFTER the U.S. destroys the society in question, with heinous slaughter and militarism, THEN it's ready for "free trade for the rich." The corpo-fascist line then becomes "we need to look forward not backward." The real perps go on to lives of luxury. I'm speaking especially of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, in both cases. I am well aware of Clinton/DLC collusion in setting it up, with Plan Colombia, as they set up the Iraq War. But I am speaking, for the moment, of the direct perps. Puppet perps like Uribe may find themselves in jail, or not, depending on, a) their silence, and b) their carrying out of tasks like these absurd charges against Venezuela (that Venezuela is 'harboring' leftist guerrillas on Venezuela's side of what Colombian has made into a chaotic border). With the local community leadership hacked up in mass graves, as in Colombia, or blown up in local conflicts arranged by Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans," as in Iraq, and whole regions terrorized by official and unofficial violence--five MILLION poor people displaced in Colombia (a half a million of whom have fled into VENEZUELA and ECUADOR for refuge from Colombia's military), and a similar displacement horror in Iraq (even worse)--local citizens, voters, surviving community activists, the poor MAJORITY, cannot organize to reject U.S. corporate exploitation.
Those who have done this go free. The CIA dumps its puppets, or not, as necessary. And we "look forward not backward" into the mop-up operations which secure the region for resource theft and as a slave labor pool, and for geo-political purposes (for instance, to have sure pro-US votes and operatives in various international bodies). Sometimes carefully designed exposes of corruption, that never touch the real perps, are needed to transition war into "free trade for the rich."
The notion that corpo-fascist 'news' organizations like the Los Angeles Times publish exposes of death, mayhem and corruption because they think that death, mayhem and corruption are wrong is absurd. Big news organizations don't work that way any more. Their owners and major investors are invested in WAR and rapacious exploitation. Editors and journalists have no independence from the profit-end of these mega-corps. There used to be a hard line between the news and profit parts of such businesses, but you have to be 50 to 60 years old to remember that hard line being maintained in "first world" journalism. (Even the BBC and NPR--with mandates for objectivity and serving the public--have fallen to corporate/war profiteer influence.) And I think that we need to be especially careful and alert with this kind of news writing--well-written, objective-sounding corpo-fascist news writing. For instance, consider this...
"After 10 years and $7 billion of the U.S.-supported Plan Colombia, the Colombian government has had only marginal success in the war on drugs and in defeating the FARC and other Marxist guerrillas."--from the OP
How and when did the U.S. "war on drugs" become the U.S. war on "the FARC and other Marxist guerrillas"--an armed movement that is comprised of COLOMBIAN CITIZENS engaged in an INTERNAL CONFLICT that has been going on for more than 40 years? What is the U.S. doing aiding and abetting (if not committing) the MURDER of Colombians, no matter what their alleged crimes?
Aside from the excruciating irony that the people we are funding in Colombia have close ties to the big drug cartels, and quite aside from the "failure" of it all, how did the "war on terror"--sold as a war on Islamic extremists--become the war on Colombians who have taken up arms against their narco-thug government and on everybody who disagrees with that government--labor leaders, peasants, advocates of the poor?
That is the question that must be raised--not just, "why has the 'war on drugs' failed?" but "what was the 'war on drugs' FOR?"--and when and how was its purpose CHANGED?
We're supposed to judge the "success" of the U.S. "war on drugs" in body counts of leftist guerillas? That is "success"--the U.S. funding the mass murder of COLOMBIANS, in their own country, some so angry at their government that they've taken up arms, not to mention the slaughter of peaceful civilians who were merely trying to exercise their human and civil rights?
The "enemy" has gotten all mooshed together in war profiteer, demagogic "heaven"--the U.S. "military-industrial complex" in all those luxury office suites in high rises crammed into our nation's capitol, where the true commanders of the Forever War issue their orders.
How and when did we become the slaughterers of teachers and labor union leaders and peasant farmers in Colombia? HOW AND WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN and WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? The big perps go free. The little perps take the heat, and survive in style, with CIA protection, if they keep their mouths shut, and if they do their little tasks--or get dumped if they don't. This is the dilemma that Uribe is now in. Things have gotten so bad in Colombia, and so bad as to Latin American and world opinion of the U.S., that a "sacrifice" may be needed. This article may be part of the set-up for that "sacrifice." The new puppet, Santos, will jettison the old puppet, Uribe, on whom the carnage and mayhem will be blamed, and then the decision will be made, whether to segue this "war"--that has already been segued once, from the "war on drugs" into the "war on terror"--into Oil War II, or, if the timing is not yet ripe for that, into a period of democracy cosmetics, and headliner purges of the lesser perps, to ram "free trade for the rich" through Congress, for ECONOMIC warfare against Venezuela and other leftist governments.
What is the U.S. milItary occupying Colombia FOR? To enforce "free trade for the rich" on the Colombian people, or something even worse--to inflict war on the entire region?
I don't know the answer to that yet. But that is the question that should be asked--not whether the U.S. has "failed" but WHAT has the U.S. been DOING--and for whom?
-------------------------------------
To check my instinct with regard to the motives of the corpo-press, so as not to malign a well-meaning author, I just looked up this author's bio.
Milburn Line was a Bush Junta-appointed USAID director in Colombia, recently, and, prior to that, in Guatemala. That is all we need to know. The USAID is one of the CIA mechanisms for funding/training rightwing groups throughout Latin America, including coup groups, thugs and rioters. But there is more of interest...
http://www.sandiego.edu/peacestudies/ipj/about/bio.php?id=449Furthermore, the USAID in
Colombia was probably one of the designers of the "pacification" of the La Macarena region, where a horrendous Colombian military massacre of local people occurred. After the Colombian military murders local community leaders and terrorizes the area, the USAID sweeps in and sets up puppet leadership; a residual military/police force is installed, to keep that community "loyal" to the fascists in Bogota and the military moves on to the next "pacification." This was the context for the slaughter of up to 2,000 people, whose bodies were recently found in a mass grave in La Macarena. USAID activities in other Latin American countries are devious, anti-democratic and in service to rightwing/corpo-fascist causes. In Colombia, they are more like the civilian arm of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are part of a war plan. I repeat, the author of this article was the Bush Junta's political operative
in Colombia! My suspicion that this article is serving some Bush junta/corpo-fascist purpose is greatly reinforced by this information.
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