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The latest strategy for "getting" Chavez--ousting him, destroying Venezuelan democracy, and also destroying the unity of leftist governments in the region--has been to try to draw Venezuela into a shooting war with Colombia. Since nothing else worked--not the 2002 U.S.-supported rightwing coup d'etat attempt, nor the 2003 U.S.-Exxon Mobil-supported oil bosses' lockout, nor the 2004 USAID-funded recall election, nor the 2005-2006 assassination/overthrow plot hatched in the U.S.-funded ($7 BILLION) Colombian military, nor the intense corpo-fascist 'news'/U.S. State Department anti-Chavez hate campaign running since 2002--all of these having failed, a new strategy was devised, circa 2007, to spread Colombia's 70-year civil war into Venezuela and Ecuador, creating region-wide chaos, and an excuse for U.S./Colombian incursions into these oil rich neighbor countries.
I won't go into the whole story--it is a long a complicated one--but it started with the treacherous Alvaro Uribe--the Bush Cartel's mafia tool in Colombia--publicly asking Chavez to negotiate with the FARC guerrillas for the release of hostages, which culminated in the U.S./Colombia dropping 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on the temporary camp of the FARC's chief hostage release and peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, just inside Ecuador's territory in March 2008, slaughtering 25 sleeping people including Reyes. Ecuador sent troops to its border. So did Venezuela. War was looming. Brazil's Lula da Silva credits Chavez with preventing this war (called him "the great peacemaker"). The story doesn't end there. Uribe soon claimed that they had seized Reyes' laptop from the bombed out camp and that it contained "evidence" that Chavez and Ecuador's president, Correa, were "terrorist lovers"--were helping the FARC to obtain a "dirty bomb," etc.--wild charges that have been completely debunked, but that Uribe continued to make to his last days in office, when he presented these and other allegations to the OAS and demanded that "somebody" invade Venezuela (the U.S.? other Latin American countries? the UN?) to stop Venezuela from "harboring" FARC guerillas. Literally nobody believed any of these claims, and the moment that Uribe was out of office--I'm pretty sure personally ousted by CIA Director Leon Panetta--the new president of Colombia immediately invited Chavez to a peace pow-wow and they re-opened the borders and re-established trade.
The arc of this war plot--which I believe was designed by Donald Rumsfeld himself (there is evidence for it)--was to entice Chavez into more contact with the FARC than would normally occur between a head of state and an insurgent force that has been operating on his border for 70 years (the hostage release bait) and to use that contact to, a) hand Chavez a diplomatic disaster with dead hostages (failed), b) start a regional shooting war (failed) and c) slander Chavez and Correa and wreak political havoc in the region (largely failed--some benefit from the slander in the corpo-fascist press).
Now consider the stakes in this lethal chess game for Chavez, Venezuela, Ecuador and the region. Chavez doesn't want war, nor does anybody else except the war profiteers here and their rightwing Miami mafia nutball allies in the new Diebold/Puke Congress (who have already met with Latin America fascists and basically called for U.S. war on the Bolivarian countries). Chavez cannot give them an excuse. Our warmongers have been trying to set up a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type situation on the Colombian/Venezuelan border for three years now--whereby the Colombian military accompanied by U.S. military 'advisors' crosses the border claiming to be in pursuit of the FARC (as they rehearsed in Ecuador in 2008) and Venezuelan soldiers end up shooting at U.S. soldiers (of which there are about 1,500 in Colombia). That scenario, or something similar, is on the Big Board in the bowels of the Pentagon probably with a post-it note stuck to it saying "2012" (after they get rid of Obama and possibly Panetta and put the Bush Junta back in power).
THIS is why Chavez would turn a Colombian guerrilla fighter over to Santos. Chavez has a responsibility to his people and to the people of South America to foil U.S. war plans. The consensus among Latin America's leftist leadership is that--as John Lennon put it--"war is over (if you want it)." Former guerillas are now presidents of THREE Latin American countries (Brazil, Uruguay and Nicaragua). Even Castro has called for the FARC/ELN to put down their arms. There has never been more regional help available for a peaceful settlement of Colombia's 70-year civil war, and, while the new leftist leaders and other world leaders helping them failed to accomplish this in 2008 (with the hostage negotiations), there is renewed hope that it can be done.
I don't know if Obama/Clinton/Panetta are just laying the groundwork for another Bush Junta oil war--as Bill Clinton did on Iraq. It's quite possible that they are--that this peace with Colombia is only temporary, that it is a ploy, that one of its purposes was to re-open the border to infiltration and that the U.S. war machine intends to use the war assets that it has placed in an arc around Venezuela's northern oil provinces and Caribbean oil coast. There is plenty of reason to fear this. But the advantage right now is to peace and responsible leaders MUST seize it.
The last time Colombia's FARC guerrillas disarmed, about 5,000 of them were slaughtered by the Colombian military and its death squads. I can understand their reluctance to go through that again--and the U.S./Colombia bombing of Reyes (who was trying to broker a peace) smashed up those hopes. But it is still true, as I said, there has never been more of a chance for a successful disarmament, as now. Most of the governments in the region will be committed to that kind of treachery not occurring again, in a brokered peace. But to get there--to get to peace in Colombia--the new Colombia/Venezuela peace has to hold.
A 70-year civil war is a classic of the "cycle of violence" syndrome. It can only be stopped by STOPPING it. The violence MUST STOP. There can be no justice--it is not even conceivable--as long as the violence continues. I certainly know who has been committing by far the most violence--the Colombian military and its death squads--that is well documented--aided and abetted by the U.S. military (funding known; direct participation hidden). And I don't see any indication yet from Santos (who was Uribe's Defense Minister) that he intends to stop killing Colombians. But at least the use of Colombia's civil war as a front for U.S. war on Venezuela is in abeyance. Venezuela and the Latin American Left CANNOT let themselves get drawn into a war. This will destroy all justice and hope of justice. The trend in Latin America is now overwhelmingly for peace, for democratic elections and for regional unity and cooperation in repelling U.S. interference. All of this progress would surely be lost if U.S. warmongers have their way.
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