Plan Colombia pays off for Washington

[Joanne98]

http://socialistworker.org
July 18, 2008

Two weeks after Íngrid Betancourt was freed from Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, along with more than a dozen other hostages, the details of exactly what happened remain cloudy.

The FARC issued a statement late last week claiming that the commanders in charge of the prisoners were “traitors,” but those same commanders clearly showed signs of having been beaten by the military as they were paraded before Colombian TV.

The captured FARC commanders’ lawyer told Colombian television that, in violation of international law, the military had painted the helicopter used in the rescue with the insignia of the Colombia Red Cross, and some of the disguised military commandos sported International Red Cross emblems. After initially denying it, the Colombian government admitted on July 16 that at least one of their commandos had, in fact, worn a Red Cross emblem in order to fool the guerrillas, in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez welcomed Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to a summit meeting where he spoke of the necessity of restoring the economic and political ties with his “brother” from Colombia. This has provoked a debate among supporters of the Venezuelan revolutionary process about why Chávez has had kind words for his former rival, and what this means for the direction of the Venezuelan government.

Raúl Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist and professor at the Latin American MultiUniversity of Franciscana, analyzes the situation after the hostage “rescue.”

THE FIRST half of 2008 produced a sharp political change that allowed the local and global right wing, as well as the multinationals, to restore their positions and go back on the offensive. The change was not confined to Colombia, although its most important epicenter was there, but it extended to countries such as Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, as well as affecting the whole region.

If there had been a sort of strategic equilibrium between the FARC and the Colombian armed forces, in the last months, this has broken in favor of the state in Colombia. The guerrillas lost all possibility of negotiating a humanitarian accord under favorable conditions, they cannot maintain political or military offensives, they have suffered a severe loss of credibility among the population, and now they can neither count on any significant allies in the region, nor in the world.

Even so, the most likely scenario is that the FARC will continue its path, with decreasing ability for initiative and the likely fragmentation of its command and geographic fronts, as is suggested by the liberation of the 15 hostages.

The strategy outlined by the Southern Command of the U.S. military and the Pentagon, and expressed in Plan Colombia II, contemplates neither the definitive defeat nor negotiations with the guerrillas.

Eliminating the FARC from the scene would be a bad business practice for the imperial strategy of destabilization and re-colonization of the Andean region–what Fidel Castro has defined as a “Pax Romana.” That project cannot be carried out without a direct or indirect war, or without permanently destabilizing the territorial and political configuration of the strategic region that includes the arc from Venezuela to Bolivia and Paraguay, passing through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

On the one hand, we are dealing with clearing the Andean region to facilitate current multinational businesses (open-air mining, hydrocarbons, biodiversity, monoculture for ethanol production) that depend as much on the appropriation of public goods as the displacement of the populations that still survive in those spaces.

We are not facing, what we might call, a “normal” capitalism, one that was capable in the past of establishing alliances and pacts that gave rise to the “benefactor” state, based on the triple alliance between the state, national business and the unions. We are dealing with a speculative-financial model and with accumulation by dispossession that substitutes negotiations for war and the extraction of surplus value with the appropriation of nature.

This system assumes the form of a criminal or mafia capitalism in countries like Colombia, not only because war and robbery work, but because these things form the central nucleus, the principle mode of accumulation. That explains the close alliance between the private war firms in Colombia that now employ 2,000 or 3,000 mercenaries nicknamed “contractors,” with the paramilitary state that Álvaro Uribe heads, rooted in the alliance with paramilitaries and narco-traffickers.

In Colombia, three forces have opposed this order of things: the guerrillas, the left of the Democratic Pole and the social movements. The first group believes that it can win through force of arms or negotiate with this new power. The Pole does not recognize the role of Washington and the multinationals, as designers and beneficiaries of the paramilitary-mafia state, and therefore overestimates the democratic margin that exists. The social movements, for their part, have big difficulties to overcome on the local and sectoral scale, and are not in any condition, for now, to put themselves forward as an alternative.

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PLAN COLOMBIA II was responsible for designing the militarist state and is, right now, searching for a way to consolidate it. Now that the FARC no longer represents a major threat to this project, the long-term plan appears clear.

Continued>>>
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/plan-colombia-pays-off-for-washington/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Good grief! This is really good. It's an encouragement to us to try to find out more

about Colombian history, as it surely would come in handy. Also in the article:

PLAN COLOMBIA II was responsible for designing the militarist state and is, right now, searching for a way to consolidate it. Now that the FARC no longer represents a major threat to this project, the long-term plan appears clear.

Far from opening space for negotiations, as the left wants, the message from the last months indicates only one path: neither peace nor surrender guarantees the lives of the guerrillas. They can fight and resist or wait to be exterminated, as happened at the end of the 1980s. Their territorial nuclei will be hit to displace them towards the border zones with Venezuela and Ecuador, where Plan Colomba II aspires to convert them into an instrument of regional destabilization.

It looks very clear, after reading this. It IS bigger than whatever President is in the White House, after all, as the people pulling the strings are known only to themselves, apparently!

Thank you, Joanne98. Sad news, but glad I read it.

[Peace Patriot]

2. I find this kind of socialist 'tract' writing difficult to read--too abstract, too ideological.

It doesn't give you much "meat"--fact, quotation, news, developments, substance--on which to judge its theory of events. And it takes too long to get a sense of what that is. In this case, I'm not sure what the thesis is, even now. It's sort of summed up by this paragraph:

"THE FIRST half of 2008 produced a sharp political change that allowed the local and global right wing, as well as the multinationals, to restore their positions and go back on the offensive. The change was not confined to Colombia, although its most important epicenter was there, but it extended to countries such as Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, as well as affecting the whole region."

I don't really agree with this analysis (if I understand it correctly). For one thing, the rightwing and multinationals never stopped being on the offensive. And I don't see a "sharp political change" in their favor, in the events of this year thus far, in South America, Colombia, or here. Just for instance--as to South America--this year saw the astonishing election of a strong leftist president in Paraguay after 61 years of rightwing rule including a period of fascist dictatorship. And I think, in addition, that Fernando Lugo's election threw a major monkey wrench into Bushite war plans (supporting civil war) in neighboring Bolivia.

I would put Bushite/global corporate predator plans in South America in the starkest of terms--they are out for blood--but I don't think they are (or will be) particularly successful. And I think they are showing signs of desperation--for instance, the unnecessary bombing of Raul Reyes' camp (out of desperation to stop the successful hostage release efforts of leftist leaders), and the orchestrated stage show of Ingrid Betancourt's "rescue." They are trying to make much of these things--as per usual, with their grip on the corporate 'news' media--but how substantive have rightwing/corporate gains really been in South America, aside from Colombia? They've won a few, yes (for instance, the 50.7% vs. 49.3% hairsbreadth defeat of the Chavistas' constitutional amendments, which was probably a blessing in disguise--hard evidence that Chavez is not a "dictator," and a lesson to the Chavistas about overly-complicated initiatives). The rightwing/corporate predators are bound to win some, with billions of U.S. tax dollars and corporate dollars poured into rightwing groups and causes. The surprise is that they have been able to buy so few victories, and no major ones--nothing to really alter the political landscape. And they still face a wall of allied leftist governments in South America, with only two exceptions (Colombia, Peru), and with the left adding a major victory this year (Paraguay), and gaining ground in Central America (leftists elected in Nicaragua and Guatemala; with El Salvador likely to go leftist next year, and possibly Mexico soon after that).

The rightwing is fighting back--with both licit and illicit, nefarious methods. Was it reasonable to expect that they wouldn't? The list of leftist, democratic governments is awesome (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and further north, Nicaragua and Guatemala). And what they are doing--collectively, cooperatively, for mutual benefit--is even more awesome: creating a South American "Common Market" (which will also extend north and become a Latin American "Common Market").

It is no surprise at all that the Bushites, and their global corporate predator sponsors, and their fascist allies in South America have dire plans to try to undermine, destabilize, and brutally overturn all of this remarkable progress. But I think the fact that Colombia is the only national platform that they have, from which to launch their dirty rotten schemes, is one major sign of their weakness, failure and desperation. Colombia has one of the worst human rights records on earth. It is the armpit of South America--where death squads, rampant cocaine and weapons trafficking, and unrelieved poverty reign. Hundreds of thousands of Colombians have fled (mostly from the Colombian military and paramilitaries) into Venezuela and Ecuador. Nearly 40 union leaders have been murdered by the Colombian military and closely associated rightwing paramilitaries this year alone. It is not a healthy country, nor is it doing any of things that it needs to do to become one.

This is the Bushites' showcase--Colombia? Jeez. This is what $5.5 BILLION in U.S./Bush military aid buys you: a cauldron of corruption.

Do Donald Rumsfeld and the global corporate predators who employ him intend Oil War II in South America?

Of course they do! You only have to read between the lines a bit, of Rumsfeld's Dec 07 op-ed in the Washington Post, and know something about the situation (like, where the oil is), to know that this is true.

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Are they royal sons-of-bitches, who think nothing of offing a million innocent people to get their oil? Yup.

Have these types of SOB (and some of the same actors--Negroponte, Bolton et al) fucked over Latin America, with horrendous brutality and without mercy, before? Yup.

Do they have war schemes now--all set up? Yup.

Do they have a high tech military "war room" set up in the U.S./Bush Embassy in Bogota, orchestrating events like the slaughter of Raul Reyes' camp inside Ecuador's border, and the Betancourt rescue stunt? Yup. That's become clear as well (who's running things in Colombia).

Is Obama going to be any better? Probably not. He talks just like them. And the global corporate predators who rule over us wouldn't let him get anywhere near the White House if he was any real threat to U.S. imperialist (global corporate predator) plans. He seems quite gung ho to be rid of Chavez, and who knows what he would tolerate to achieve that goal? Venezuela's democracy may in more danger from an Obama regime than it ever was from the Bush regime. Never forget--NEVER FORGET!--that it was a Democratic president, LBJ, who slaughtered the first million of the two million people slaughtered in Southeast Asia, during the Vietnam War--an horrendous slaughter that seemed to have only one aim: padding the pockets of war profiteers. I voted for LBJ in 1964. He was the "peace candidate."

Never forget.

Obama seems more interested in moving the forever war to Afghanistan and Pakistan (Surge II), now that the oil contracts in Iraq have been secured (along with agreements for permanent U.S. military protection of those contracts), and with an attack on Iran apparently off the drawing board for now (mostly blockaded by China, I think; also by reality--Iran is well defended). Afghanistan/Pakistan can keep the war industry in clover indefinitely. So, he may leave Oil War II to Rumsfeld's private army (Colombian military, rightwing paramilitaries and Blackwater), with a few huffs and puffs from the 4th Fleet. Their plan seems to be to support secessionists in the oil rich provinces of Venezuela (Zulia, on the Colombian border/Caribbean coast), Ecuador (northwest/U.S. Manta air base region), and Bolivia (gas/oil-rich eastern provinces), to create fascist mini-states in control of the oil, with the added benefit of really stirring up shit in this region--civil war, civil disorder, destabilization, distraction, draining the resources of leftist governments.

Anyway, a solid case can be made for these war plans, and also for them spanning U.S. regimes. (Rhetoric-wise, Obama is a thorough-going imperialist--although some of his bluster may be literally for his own protection--we know what happened to JFK when he started talking nuclear disarmament and world peace, and to RFK, when he decided that the Vietnam War should be ended.)

The question is: How will South America react this time around? (They've seen U.S. aggression and dirty rotten schemes before.) This article mentions Hugo Chavez's brotherly meeting with Uribe--one of the few concrete items on which the article hangs--as if it were a defeat for the South American left and for the people. I don't think the article gives Chavez enough credit for being one helluva smart guy. He has continually tried to pull Uribe away from Colombia's more extreme fascists entrenched in the military (and we now have the name for who, in particular, is the worst of the malefactors--Defense Minister Santos--who would no doubt head an all-out military dictatorship), and into the orbit of the new South American leadership--all leftists--who have laid the foundation for a South American "Common Market" (and, proposed by Brazil, a common defense; both items--the market and the defense--not including the U.S.). Chavez has suffered insult, slander and great treachery from Uribe, but keeps coming back with hands open, offering peace. It has been a fascinating thing to watch.

As long as Colombia retains at least the semblance and forms of democracy, change is possible--especially as Colombia is surrounded by countries with progressive/leftist governments (and all over the continent). If Colombia were to shut down, under an outright military dictatorship, it would be much more likely to be used as a launching pad for the above purposes. The remnants and forms of democracy must be maintained. And that is one big reason why Chavez keeps extending the hand of peace to Uribe and bolstering him up. Uribe is elected by at least some of the people. He may be a cocaine-trafficking, death-squad connected dirtbag and election fraudster. But he is a civilian, propped up by the forms of democracy. (Analogy: Would you rather have George Bush as president, or Donald Rumsfeld? Bush is a placeholder. Our democracy may be an empty shell, but its forms still give us hope. And if we had leftist governments in Canada and Mexico, we would have even more hope.) And--bottom line--Uribe holds power in Colombia, which borders Venezuela. Remember that old adage about keeping your enemies close. That is what Chavez is doing--and he (and others--Lulu in Brazil, for instance) also very much want to pull Colombia into the orbit of the new South American "Common Market" and away from the U.S., for which it is currently just a chattel (a client state). The most serious danger in this regard is the Colombian military (larded with the $5.5 BILLION from the U.S.) and Defense Minister Santos.

We've had all sorts of very positive events in South America this year, some of them over the past few weeks. Chavez met with Uribe last week (a very big positive--progress takes time, and requires peace). They announced cooperative economic and infrastructure projects (such as a new railroad between Colombia and Venezuela). Then, while Chavez visited Rafael Correa (to convince him to restore diplomatic relations with Colombia), Lula da Silva met with Uribe (to convince him to join the common defense plans of the new "Common Market," UNASUR). Several new cooperative development projects were announced with fanfare--a joint oil project of Venezuela and Ecuador, and an enormous road construction project to link Bolivia to both oceans, financed by Venezuela and Brazil, with sea access to the Pacific provided by Chile. Also, Evo Morales met with several leaders (Chavez--and Correa or Lulu, can't recall) concerning the security situation in Bolivia (re the fascist secessionists).

There is a very sympathetic article about indigenous political power in Bolivia, in "National Geographic" this month, by the way. (NG has been bad on the South American left in the past.) It's a pretty good article for NG, and doesn't shy away from Bolivia's awful racist history. There is a companion article (with great photos) on the Altiplano.

It is a mistake to equate the fortunes--good or ill--of the FARC guerrilla fighters in Colombia with the fortunes of the political left throughout South America. The FARC is an anomaly--as much of a dinosaur as Colombia's fascists are. Chavez has urged them to demobilize and free all their hostages, and even Castro has criticized their hostage taking. The political landscape in South America has vastly changed since the last time the FARC tried to demobilize (when death squads killed 4,000 of their office holders, candidates and supporters). There is much more hope for an orderly peace--with leftists in control of institutions like the OAS, the Rio Group and the new UNASUR. The key is reducing U.S. influence in Colombia, retaining the forms and hope of democracy, and checking the Colombian military as a disruptive force. South America has a great future ahead of it, if it pulls together. It will do so without Colombia, but integrating Colombia, first economically, and later politically, would certainly strengthen the whole project, and lessen the danger of U.S./corporate aggression and intervention.