5-07-07, 9:15 am
By now, it’s not exactly a secret that the U.S. government has no consistent commitment to its universalist bombast about fostering democracy or even fighting terrorism. One of my favorite examples is its cheap propagandistic embrace of the April 2005 elections in Lebanon followed by its support for the 2006 Israeli war – a war that, incidentally, wrecks the theory of the “democratic peace” so beloved of political scientists. You’ll all have your own – the consistent refusal to extradite Luis Posada Carriles to stand trial for killing 73 people in his attack on a Cuban airliner, the need to be dragged kicking and screaming by Ayatollah Sistani and the U.N. Security Council to agree to elections in Iraq (followed by making a virtue of necessity and loudly claiming credit for them), the support for a coup attempt in Venezuela; the list is not short.
But I’d like to suggest you seriously consider Colombia, where a storm has been brewing for the past month. It started in March, when an employee leaked a CIA document to the LA Times which concluded that the Colombian army, had been involved as recently as 2002 in joint operations with right-wing paramilitary groups, and that General Mario Montoya, the head of the army, was personally involved.
Since then, at least two dozen congressmen in Colombia have been tied to paramilitary groups and one lawmaker has alleged that President Alvaro Uribe himself was involved, and that in the late 1980’s death squads used to meet at his ranch. Uribe unsurprisingly denies this; as governor of Antioquia in the mid-1990’s, however, he created supposedly legal militias, the Convivirs, that have later been linked to illegal paramilitaries.
At first sight, these revelations are about as stunning as learning that Dick Cheney is a liar or that George Bush doesn’t understand what’s going on in Iraq. Not only have connections between the Colombian government and the so-called United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC is the Spanish acronym) been known for a long time, the creation of right-wing paramilitaries is a standard tool in counterinsurgency.
In the context of Bush’s “war on terror,” however, it takes on a whole new meaning. Not counting Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel and Egypt. The AUC is one of the few right-wing groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. We all know that the United States supports terrorism in many places, including that carried out by parts of the Iraqi government; in this case, however, it has been supporting terrorism that it itself has proscribed.
When these CIA revelations came out, Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of the congressional leaders in the fight against Plan Colombia, placed a hold on the next tranche of $55 million in aid. Uribe will be in Washington this week to argue, among other things, for a resumption of aid.
The Moonie Times, always worth a read for the sensible right-wing militarist viewpoint (as opposed to the crazy Fox News viewpoint), just published an impassioned editorial calling for support for Uribe. Since no one can deny the crimes of the AUC, the argument is the standard one – whatever he may have done in the past, Uribe has been reining in and decommissioning the paramilitaries.
This is partly true, although it’s worth noting that all but a handful have complete impunity. Still, someone should tell this to the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, which in the past 10 years has lost 178 out of 1300 people – a casualty ratio you’d expect to see in an army engaged in hot combat, not a group of pacifists who just want to be left alone by all parties to the war – which has suffered massacres during Uribe’s reign, and is right now under siege by AUC-type groups.
If Bush administration support of Colombia’s paramilitary-ridden government is not enough evidence of hypocrisy for you, consider this: Colombia’s attorney general Mario Iguaran is trying to get 8 Chiquita executives extradited to Colombia because of $1.7 million in payments made by Chiquita to the AUC, about half of that after the State Department declared it a terrorist organization. Chiquita claims it was extortion; Iguaran does not agree.
Iraqis applying for asylum to the United States have their applications automatically denied if they have paid ransom to insurgent or terrorist groups to save a family member, because they have “materially supported” terrorism – I couldn’t make that up if I tried. Any guesses on whether the same criterion will be applied to Chiquita executives?
From Empire Notes
