|
if and when the U.S. decides that a change is needed, for whatever reason. For instance, Alvaro Uribe tried very hard to extend his term of office. He bribed legislators for the first extension (one of them went to jail for it, but not Uribe), and then tried to mount a referendum to lift term limits. When that didn't work, there were rumors of a pending Uribe coup to stay in office, at which point CIA Director Leon Panetta visited Bogota, and I think Panetta's mission was both to oust Uribe for political reasons--mainly, his very dirty connections to the Bush Junta--and to offer him CIA protection from prosecution for his many crimes in exchange for him keeping his mouth shut.
Some 70 of Uribe's closest political cohorts, including family members, are under investigation or already in jail for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking, bribery, spying and other crimes. Colombian prosecutors appeared to be moving in on Uribe. That was one reason he may have been contemplating a coup to stay in power. Next, Uribe, in his final weeks in office, made baseless accusations against Chavez about Venezuela 'harboring' FARC guerrillas--which nobody believed (and the new prez of Colombia immediately withdrew)--and Uribe ends up with a prestigious international legal appointment, compliments of the Obama administration--to the commission investigating Israel's firing on aid boats--and a cushy academic sinecure at Georgetown U. (--recent rumor: the Jesuits are getting such heat for this absurd and immoral appointment that they may drop Uribe from the faculty).
Notably, Uribe tidied up two matters last year, in cahoots with the U.S. Bushwhack ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield--whom the Obamans had left in place until very recently. Uribe and Brownfield secretly negotiated and secretly signed a U.S./Colombia military agreement that included "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. (Note: The U.S. State Department recently "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of foreign persons in Colombia "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan"--tip of the iceberg, in my opinion.) Secondly, Uribe and Brownfield arranged the midnight extradition of key death squad witnesses to the U.S., on mere drug trafficking charges, where the witnesses were buried in the U.S. federal prison system, out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors, by the complete sealing of their cases. The Colombian prosecutors loudly objected to no avail.
With those details taken care of, and a near state of war created with Venezuela (which cut off diplomatic relations with Colombia when Uribe made his charges about the FARC, and closed its border in fear that Colombia was about to bomb Venezuela, as it had done to Ecuador in 2008), the stage was set for the new president of Colombia, Uribe's former defense minister Manuel Santos, to play the peacemaker, withdraw the charges about the FARC, re-establish ties with Venezuela and altogether make it seem like a "new day" in Colombia--in preparation for the Obama team's push in Congress to get the U.S./Colombia "free trade for the rich" bill passed (which has been held up by labor Democrats because of the short lives of trade union leaders in Colombia--some 40 more of whom have been murdered by RW death squads this year alone, with hundreds murdered over the course of the Uribe regime).
Santos was vetted by and chosen by the CIA to replace Uribe, in my opinion. He has so far not been implicated in the horrendous crime wave that Uribe oversaw in Colombia, though he was defense minister during some of it--and he is a "player," as they say--on a "wink and a nod" basis with RW U.S. Senators and Pentagon war profiteers. (I watched him during some U.S. Senate committee hearings and saw lots of winks and nods.) Colombia is the recipient of $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid, with the U.S. military ensconced at bases all over Colombia. The U.S. does not risk that kind of investment by not controlling the commander-in-chief of all that money and the alleged decider about U.S. military activities in Colombia.
I would say that the situation is almost exactly the same in Honduras--that the RW 'winner' of the martial law 'election' that Hillary Clinton arranged serves at the pleasure of the CIA. (In fact, they may be protecting Lobo from his own RW. He recently got some "pajamas" sent to him--a warning from the RW that he could be evicted from Honduras in his pajamas, like President Zelaya was--i.e., in the middle of the night, at gunpoint. I can't recall right now what Lobo did to deserve this--something uppity.) (I think there may be some tension between current CIA methods and John "death squad" Negroponte methods of control of Latin American client states. The CIA is currently into democracy cosmetics, but the fascists in Honduras and their fascist political allies here are not. Hundreds of trade union leaders, teachers, human rights workers, anti-coup protest leaders and also gay and lesbian activists have been murdered, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, raped in Honduras. It is starting to look like Colombia, whereby the military and their death squads cleanse the political landscape of opposition leaders with murder and terror, and then all that gets swept under the carpet, with maybe a few unlucky patsies taking the rap--if that--and the RW/fascist elite then runs the country however the U.S. tells them to. Both methods--democracy cosmetics or RW death squads--have devastating impacts on the target country, and, in the cases of Honduras and Colombia, seem to used as one-two punch.)
Peru falls somewhere in the middle, as to the U.S. vetting and choosing its leaders (and ousting them at will). It is in transition to becoming a U.S. client state. It still has enough of a democracy that the voters could conceivably oust President Alan (25% approval rating) Garcia. But U.S. military aid (corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs") and U.S. "free trade for the rich" are two significant talons that the U.S. has planted in Peru's neck. If your military and other security forces are on the U.S. "gravy train," they want to keep things that way. And "free trade for the rich" creates an artificial, U.S. import loving, "high living" urban elite--as it did, for instance, in Venezuela, prior to Chavez--who vote RW to maintain that lifestyle at the expense of poor peasant farmers and poor workers (the majority). LOTS of tension in Peru. I think a RW coup d'etat--to return to the prior RW bloody dictatorship--is a possibility, especially if the left wins the next election. The US would likely find a way to approve such a coup--as they did in Honduras. But then that dictator and other coup leaders would serve at the pleasure of the CIA.
So I disagree with Evo Morales somewhat. Yes, the U.S. is actively trying to topple leftist governments in Latin America, to derail the awesome leftist democracy movement that has swept the region, and most especially to "divide and conquer" the strong South American movement toward a European Union-style organization of the continent and common market. They seem to be concentrating on the ALBA countries first--allied with Venezuela in the small countries trade group, a mostly Central America/Caribbean trade group. Honduras and Ecuador are notable examples. The coup government in Honduras withdrew Honduras from ALBA. They did not leave this for Lobo to do, after Hillary's (s)election. It was too important. And we can be sure that, if the RW coup had succeeded in Ecuador, they would have withdrawn Ecuador from ALBA. The U.S. clearly pressured El Salvador's new leftist leader NOT to join ALBA. He was about to. Then the Honduran coup happened next door, and he withdrew that initiative. He's safe for the moment. But Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua may be the next target. The U.S. now has an iron grip on neighboring Honduras, as it did back in the 1980s, when Honduras was used as the footstool for U.S. death squads (the "contras") to infiltrate Nicaragua and assassinate teachers, mayors, local priests, whoever supported the Sandanista government. The Sandanistas have been elected again, all this time later--and Nicaragua is a member of ALBA. The U.S. likely wants to crush ALBA first, before taking on the more powerful integration movement in South America which has Brazil as one of its leaders.
There is simply no question in my mind that this is what the U.S. is doing. The U.S.--that is, our real rulers, multinational corporations and war profiteers--are trying to reconquer Latin America. The Obama team would prefer democracy cosmetics, but they'll take their RW coups however they can get them. And, if the Bushwhacks get back in power, we may well see an outright war--another oil war, this time in South America.
So in that sense Evo is right. But I am making the subtler point that serving at the pleasure of the CIA does not make you secure. RW coup leaders, for instance, may have to empty their bank accounts and flee--say, to Miami--when things go haywire (democracy rises). They may find themselves in the dock for war crimes. They may find themselves ousted and replaced, with or without CIA protection, according to U.S. multinational/war profiteer goals and strategies. And if they are not willing to, or can't, keep the public in a state of "Stockholm syndrome" terror, and successfully repress the leftist majority--that is, if the democracy is functioning at all--they may find themselves facing a CIA "great white hope" candidate running against them. (I'm thinking about Garcia.)
Leftist leaders may have to constantly deal with security issues, re U.S. coup plots. But Santos, Lobo, and Garcia are not all that secure, utterly dependent, as they are, on U.S. money and U.S. support. The U.S. is not liked around the world or in Latin America--especially in Latin America, where an historic movement for independence from the U.S. is under way. Ties to the U.S. are held in great suspicion. (That U.S./Colombia military deal that Brownfield and Uribe secretly negotiated and signed caused an uproar in the region, and was recently declared unconstitutional by the Colombian Supreme Court--and Santos, who has a RW majority in the Colombia congress, will likely NOT submit it to congress--as it should have been--because it is such a slavish document.) Most Latin American leaders are in accord on this matter--their sovereignty. Even RW leaders have to play to it. They don't want to be seen as U.S. puppets, by their people or by other leaders. And REAL security, for Latin American countries, can only come from cooperation, economic integration and collective political/economic strength. They are ALL vulnerable to toppling, as long as the U.S. has the power to push them around. Evo Morales, or Hugo Chavez, or Rafael Correa, if they get toppled, won't end up at Georgetown U. (unless the Jesuits get uppity). On the other hand, Uribe is a hunted man--and I would imagine, a haunted one (depending on how Rumsfeldian--i.e., cold-hearted--he is). He may be a "made man" but he is not secure. Colombia's prosecutors are on his tail, their hunting dogs perhaps only tenuously leashed. Santos is playing the game pretty well, for now, but how secure would he be without U.S. military and political support? And what does he have to do to keep it?
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
