Obama's Pact For Colombia Bases Termed "Dangerous

[Judi Lynn]

February 4, 2010 at 09:18:29
Obama's Pact For Colombia Bases Termed "Dangerous"
By Sherwood Ross

The Obama administration's pact to use seven Colombian military bases accelerates "a dangerous trend in U.S. hemispheric policy," an article in The Nation magazine warns.

The White House claims the deal merely formalizes existing military cooperation but the Pentagon's 2009 budget request said it needed funds to improve one of the bases in order to conduct "full spectrum operations throughout South America" and to "expand expeditionary warfare capability."

"With a hodgepodge of treaties and projects, such as the International Law Enforcement Academy and the Merida Initiative, Obama is continuing the policies of his predecessors, spending millions to integrate the region's military, policy, intelligence and even, through Patriot Act-like legislation, judicial systems," writes historian Greg Grandin, a New York University professor.

Although much of Latin America is in the vanguard of the "anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement," Grandin writes, the Obama administration is "disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia." Grandin's article in The Nation's February 8th issue is titled, "Muscling Latin America."

The fountainhead of this effort is Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar U.S. aid package that over the past decade "has failed to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States," Grandin says, noting that more Andean coca was synthesized into cocaine in 2008 than in 1998.

Underlying the anti-drug fight, however, is a counterinsurgency struggle for control of "ungoverned spaces" via a "clear, hold and build" sequence urged by the U.S. military to weaken Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces(FARC). The Bush White House condoned the right-wing paramilitaries who, along with their narcotraficante allies "now control about 10 million acres, roughly half of the country's most fertile land," Grandin reports. They also spread terror in the countryside and are responsible for many killings and for driving peasants from their land.

Grandin reports that the paras "have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist Leon Valencia calls "true local dictatorships,' consolidating their property seizures and deepening their ties to narcos, landed elites and politicians."

What's more, "The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress, where more than forty deputies from the governing party are under investigation for ties to (the right-wing) AUC (United Self Defense Forces).

More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-s-Pact-For-Colombia-by-Sherwood-Ross-100203-535.html

[bemildred]

1. So, how long has this been going on, 40 years or something like that.

Maybe 50 now. And the result is the place looks sort of like a Catholic Somalia or maybe Yemen? Are we supposed to think this is a good result? Excellence on parade?

[Peace Patriot]

2. 500 labor leaders and almost 200 teachers murdered since Uribe came to power,

After describing these and other horrors of the U.S.-funded "Plan Colombia," the article really gets depressing as it describes the Obama administration's approach to Latin America, which is basically more of the same.

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"Colombia remains the hands-down most repressive country in Latin America," Grandin asserts. "More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since (Alvaro) Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC."

Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities fighting paras who have seized land to cultivate African palm for ethanol production have been evicted by mercenaries and the military, Grandin says. "From Panama to Mexico, rural protesters are likewise targeted. In the Salvadoran department of Cabanas," he observes, "death squads have executed four leaders---three in December---who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community."

Obama could reconsider the Pentagon's base deal and Plan Colombia, Grandin writes, "But that would mean rethinking a longer, multi-decade, bipartisan, trillion-dollars-and-counting "war on drugs,' and Obama has other wars to extricate himself from---or not, as the case may be."

"Unable or unwilling to make concessions on these and other issues important to Latin America, normalizing relations with Cuba, for instance, or advancing immigration reform, the White House is adopting an increasingly antagonistic posture," Grandin explains. He notes that after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Brazil, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. An Argentine diplomat responded, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries that way."

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That remark of Sec of State Hillary Clinton--warning Latin American leaders of "the consequences" if they don't toe the line on Iran--startled me. You just don't DO that--unless you're Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, that is, unless you are an uncivilized boor. Even if another country's sovereignty is only pretend, you don't do that--threaten basically friendly, democratic countries with "consequences"--especially after your country just slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people to steal their oil. What kind of "consequences" was she talking about? What kind of punishment? It was vague and it was boorish--leaving it to their imaginations to figure out what she meant.

I'm reminded of my gut reaction to Obama's remarks to the Miami mafia during the campaign. He said that Latin America "needs U.S. leadership." The word that came to my mind was "insulting." That statement was insulting. I figured, back then, that he just had a "tin ear" when it came to Latin America, and he would maybe improve. He continued in the insulting vein through the week of his inauguration (against Chavez)--changed, in the spring, as president, to promising "peace, respect and cooperation," but that was soon contradicted by the Obama administrations sneaky support of the rightwing military coup in Honduras--against pleas from virtually everybody in Latin America--and by their absolutely insulting behavior around the U.S./Colombia military agreement and the buildup of U.S. forces there. They did not even give Latin American leaders notice that this was going to be announced (let alone consult them on it). That was the Obama team's "inner Rumsfeld" at work, I think. Uribe made the announcement--but he does nothing without Washington's okay, and that was even more insulting, that the U.S. didn't make a formal announcement. When South American leaders invited Obama to attend their UNASUR emergency meeting on this matter, the White House ignored them. So much for "respect."

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombia's new death squads exposed

Colombia's new death squads exposed
Thursday 04 February 2010by Tom Mellen

New death squads have arisen to replace Colombia's notorious right-wing paramilitary groups - and they are committing the same acts of terrorism against trade unionists as their predecessors, a prominent US-based rights organisation has warned.

Under pressure from human rights groups and Washington, Bogota has overseen the demobilisation of over 31,000 fighters from the so-called United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, in recent years.

But dozens of groups have emerged as successors, engaging in activities ranging from mass murder to extortion, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The death squads were organised by rural landowners, ostensibly to counter leftwing guerilla groups. They soon became a powerful, lawless force in much of the country, with links to senior rightwing politicians and drugs cartels.

The US government has declared the AUC a terrorist organisation, and government pressure eventually forced the paramilitaries to disband between 2003 and 2006.

The 113-page Paramilitaries' Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia report, based on nearly two years of research, documents widespread and serious abuses by the new groups.

According to the report, the groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and "create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control."

Often, they target trade unionists, human rights defenders, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice and community members who do not follow their orders.

More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/86454