Washington’s Role in Current Conflict Between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador

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Washington’s Role in Current Conflict Between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador

Written by Cory Fischer-Hoffman
Monday, 03 March 2008

Caracas, Venezuela - On Saturday March 1st Colombia’s Air Force carried out a military operation in Ecuador, violating the sovereignty of its western neighbor nation. The bombing resulted in at least 17 deaths. One of the people reported to be among the victims is Raúl Reyes, commander and spokesperson for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). This attack is the continuation and escalation of an on-going war in Colombia that has persisted for 40 years due to US military funding and training of Armed Forces in Colombia.

The United States has a long history of intervention in Latin America, ranging from military occupations, to financial support for the overthrow of democratically elected presidents to economic sabotage to military trainings of state and private death squads. In Colombia, the United States has taken particular interest in the oil, land, water, and agricultural resources as well as the ports and profitable cocaine trade, and more recently Colombia’s strategic location in relation to Venezuela and Ecuador.

The United States supported and funded a coup attempt in April 2002 in Venezuela, temporarily taking democratically elected President Hugo Chávez out of power. While Venezuela has continued to sell oil to the United States, Chávez has taken a pro-sovereignty stance, demanding that the United States not intervene in their national politics. The Bush Administration has made a series of aggressive statements towards Venezuela, working to support the political opposition that launched the coup attempt and is now engaged in tactics of economic sabotage with the aims of destabilizing the Venezuelan economy. In addition to rich natural resources, Venezuela is offering an alternative to the US-led neoliberal development model by proposing a "Socialism of the 21st Century." The Unites States government uses its military power, technology, and wealth to threaten and to impose its culture, politics, and economies on other nations. When those nations resist, they are branded as terrorists, enemies or communists. Since September 11, 2001 the US government has used "the war on terrorism" to advance their aims of acquiring more oil, land and resources.

With the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan rising every day, and a complicit media, which is forbidden by law to show the coffins of US soldiers who were killed in Iraq, the US people have become desensitized to the death of those labeled as terrorists. The US is employing its classic logic; that in the hunt for "terrorists" there are no rules. They have imposed this onto Colombians for many years, fueling an internal civil war, and providing the military funding and training necessary to target the FARC, the ELN, and to terrorize the Colombian people. Colombia’s civil war plays a destabilizing force within the entire region and with the recent attack of Ecuador, that process has been escalated rapidly. It is important to emphasize that Colombia has violated Ecuador’s national sovereignty and has for all intents and purposes brought its war to Ecuador. In response Ecuador has withdrawn its ambassador from Colombia and Venezuela has sent tanks to the border. While bombing another sovereign nation is standard behavior for the US government, this military operation is unprecedented and marks a calculated escalation of tensions within the region.

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