The 'South Vietnamization' of Colombia...

[Peace Patriot]

The current US military buildup in Colombia has haunting similarities to the US military buildup in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. And I hope to God that we who will pay for it with the lives of our children and other family and friends in the US military, and with our taxes and our increased impoverishment--and with yet another genocidal blight on our country's reputation--will somehow be able to prevent this war and spare our neighbors to the south more death, torture and destruction inflicted by the US government and by its brutal fascist allies in Latin America, in our name.

I have little hope that we can stop it. But the least we can do is to be alert to the evidence of this growing threat, to alert others to this threat and to protest and oppose it as well as we can.

I think that the US will be defeated, as it was in Vietnam, if the war that the Pentagon had been preparing for, comes to pass. The main US ally in Latin America, Colombia--a country with one of the worst human rights records on earth, a country that has been armed by us and that has invited the US military to access seven military bases "for full spectrum" military operations "throughout South America"--is extremely corrupt, as were the South Vietnamese government and military. Colombia's narco-thug government is propped up by $6 BILLION in US military aid, similar to South Vietnam. The demurs of the Pentagon and the US government, that this dramatic US military buildup in Colombia is not a threat, are very reminiscent of Vietnam. And, above all, the SILENCE in the US--our peoples' obliviousness to the clear threat of another US oil war--is very like 1963, a year before the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident was extrapolated by our war profiteers into a full scale war that killed two million Southeast Asians and over 55,000 US soldiers.

There is one big difference with Vietnam. That war was pure war profiteering. This one has both war profiteering and OIL as the motives--oil to fuel the Pentagon's gigantic war machine, to be charged to us--US taxpayers--by private US-based global corporate predators at hugely inflated prices, and oil to fuel the tankers of US "free trade for the rich" globalization. The US war machine just slaughtered a million innocent people in Iraq, to steal their oil. There are some serious signs that they may be preparing to do it again--this time in our own hemisphere.

Like most Vietnamese throughout their history, most Latin Americans desperately want independence from the US and any and all colonizers. They want leaders and governments of their own democratic choice, as did the people of Vietnam (which would have elected Ho Chi Minh in 1954, if the US had not nixed that UN-sponsored election).

Latin Americans have furthermore conceived a passion for democracy not seen in the world since our own initial revolution. You can't defeat people with those sentiments in their hearts, no matter how big your war machine is. But the cost in suffering, if this war proceeds, will be very great--as it already is in Colombia, and now in Honduras.

Here are several articles outlining the US military buildup in Colombia, and reporting on this increasingly tense and worrisome situation...

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Official US Air Force Document Reveals the True Intentions Behind the US-Colombia Military Agreement
November 5th 2009, by Eva Golinger
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4917
The document on which it is based:
DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE MILITARY CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM FISCAL YEAR 2010
http://www.centrodealerta.org/documentos_desclasificados/original_in_english_air_for.pdf

"...the US Air Force document, dated May 2009, confirms that the concerns of South American nations have been right on target. The document exposes that the true intentions behind the agreement are to enable the US to engage in “full spectrum military operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies…and anti-US governments…”

"The military agreement between Washington and Colombia authorizes the access and use of seven military installations in Palanquero, Malambo, Tolemaida, Larandia, Apíay, Cartagena and Málaga. Additionally, the agreement allows for “the access and use of all other installations and locations as necessary” throughout Colombia, with no restrictions. Together with the complete immunity the agreement provides (for) US military and civilian personnel, including private defense and security contractors, the clause authorizing the US to utilize any installation throughout the entire country - even commercial aiports, for military ends, signifies a complete renouncing of Colombian sovereignty and officially converts Colombia into a client-state of the US."

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Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) against Venezuela
March 15th 2009, by Eva Golinger - Axis of Logic
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4296

"A secret document of the US Army National Ground Intelligence Center, recently declassified in part, through the application of the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), confirms that the Pentagon's most powerful team for psychological operations is employing its forces against Venezuela....
"The arrival of the US Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) in Colombia in the year 2006 and the strategy of pushing the FARC and the Colombian civil conflict into Venezuelan territory cannot be taken as a coincidence; for it is exactly the moment when the US State Department and the Pentagon also started to publicly accuse Venezuela of collaborating with terrorism, specifically by referring to alleged dealings with the FARC."

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Eva Golinger: U.S. Privatizes Colombian War with its Transnational Mercenaries
August 12th 2009, by ABN
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4719

"More than half of (US Plan Colombia) money went to private North American contractors charged with developing, promoting and furthering irregular warfare in Colombian territory and in Latin America....
'This constitutes the total privatization of the war in Colombia through the utilization and financing of transnational mercenaries that have no legal obligation to respond to any judicial system in the world. In other words, they enjoy complete immunity...'."

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Venezuela-Colombia Dispute Reaches WTO, Border Closed After 2 Venezuelan Troops Shot Dead
Published on November 4th 2009, by Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4912

(The article reports on yet more border incidents, and this...) "Venezuela also announced the capture of two Colombians and a Venezuelan accused of spying for Colombia’s Administrative Security Department (DAS). Venezuelan Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami presented documents allegedly originating from the DAS, which showed that Colombia had sent spies to Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba as part of a CIA operation."



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The following article pretty much lays out the whole picture of US war preparations...

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Colombia-Venezuela: The Threat of Imperialist War Looms in the Americas

November 9th 2009, by Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com

The possibility of an imperialist war in the Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United States finalized a ten year accord allowing the U.S. to massively expand its military presence in the Latin American nation.

The move comes as the U.S. seeks to regain its hegemony over Latin America – which has declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide rebellion against neoliberalism spearheaded by the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, led by President Hugo Chavez.

In order to regain control of its “backyard,” the U.S. is increasingly resorting to more interventionist measures. This is reflected by the recent military coup in Honduras, destabilisation of progressive governments in Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay and a massive military build up in the region, including new military bases in Panama and the reactivation of its Fourth Fleet.

Over the past decade the Venezuelan government, which is the fifth largest oil exporter in the world, has used its control over this resource to massively increase social spending. This has resulted in significant achievements, such as poverty levels being reduced by half, the eradication of illiteracy, and free universal education and healthcare for the poor.

In 2005 Chavez declared the revolution to be outright socialist in its aims. Since then, in addition to regular elections and referendums, the government has sought to promote grassroots democracy and participation, through the creation of institutions such as urban land committees, health committees, grassroots assemblies, communes, workers’ councils and communal councils.

However, these pro-poor and redistributive policies have increasingly brought the Chavez government into conflict with powerful economic interests both in Venezuela and the U.S. The new bases deal poses a direct threat to this radical process of social change.

Hand in hand with this military build up has come a fraudulent propaganda campaign that tries to paint the democratically elected Chavez government as a “dictatorship” and claims that the government promotes drug trafficking, and supplies arms to left-wing guerrillas in Colombia.

Tensions between Venezuela and the U.S.-aligned government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe have also increased with the deal. As the negotiations came to light in July, Chavez ordered the “freezing” of all diplomatic and commercial relations with Colombia.

With the finalization of the accord Chavez declared that Colombia had handed over it’s sovereignty to the U.S. “Colombia today is no longer a sovereign country... it is a kind of colony,” he said.

Under the deal, the U.S. military has access, use, and free movement among two air bases, two naval bases, and three army bases, in addition to an existing two military bases, as well as all international civilian airports across the country.

The deal also grants U.S. personnel full diplomatic immunity for any human rights abuses or other crimes committed on Colombian soil.

Among other things, U.S. military, civilian, and diplomatic personnel and contractors covered by the accord are also exempt from customs duties, tariffs, rent and taxes, while ships and planes are exempt from most cargo inspections.

Although U.S. officials claim publicly that only 800 personnel will operate in Colombia the deal places no limits on the numbers of military personnel that can be deployed.***

(MORE)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4922

***("Just a few military advisors," they said. No biggie. Just to assist our "friends"--the CIA-installed fascist thugs running South Vietnam.)

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This article addresses the current incident...

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Colombia’s Allegations Against Venezuela Continue

Published on November 20th 2009, by Tamara Pearson – Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, November 19th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Following Colombia’s announcement last Friday that members of the Venezuelan National Guard had been captured in Colombian territory and would be returned to Venezuela, Venezuelan National Guard General Oralando Mijares responded that the four men were actually intercepted in international waters. Subsequently, Colombia accused Venezuela of illegally blowing up two border bridges.

The men deported by Colombia to Venezuela last Saturday “were detained by the Colombian military forces in the Meta River,” Mijares said.

The Meta River is an 800km long tributary river of the Orinoco River, located in Colombian territory, with its final part defining the border with Venezuela.

“This goes against an entire treaty around the demarcation of borders and navigation of rivers endorsed by both governments, that is current, and that refers to the right to free navigation of the rivers that separate the two countries,” Mijares explained on Venezuelan Television (VTV).

Since then, Colombian Defence Minister Gabriel Silva denounced that Venezuela had supposedly violated international law by blowing up two bridges. He said the Venezuelan National Guard had “arrived in trucks from the Venezuelan side” and destroyed “bridges that united communities from both sides of the border, bridges constructed by the communities themselves, and the guards proceeded to dynamite them from the Venezuelan side to affect the everyday life of the local population.”

Venezuelan Vice President Ramon Carrizalez responded on Thursday, saying the action had been taken in order to “destroy crossings constructed especially for drug trafficking,” and that the National Guard’s action was not illegal.

“Any bridge, be it improvised, used to enter or exit a country without complying with agreements that govern such things, is considered illegal,” said Carrizalez. He claimed that Colombia was generating such “alarm” to distract international attention from “the real problem that afflicts this country, which is the construction of the seven U.S military bases.”

(MORE)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4937

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Finally, here is the Venezuelan Ambassador to the US pleading with President Obama to change this war policy to a policy of peace, respect and cooperation, as President Obama pledged earlier in the year. Ambassador Alvarez first outlines Venezuelan and regional objections to the new US bases in Colombia. (He also, below, cites Sen. Patrick Leahy and Sen. Christopher Dodd on this subject.)

"...a number of public documents shed light on the agreement’s real objectives. In a document presented to the U.S. Congress in May 2009, the Air Force offers an alarming justification for expanding the use of the Palanquero Air Base in Colombia. “Palanquero provides an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America,” it says, which are “essential for supporting the U.S. mission in Colombia and throughout the United States Southern Command.”

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US Bases: A Step Backward for the Hemisphere

November 17th 2009, by Bernardo Alvarez - The Hill

It’s a shame that the Obama administration has not more closely considered the region’s reaction to this agreement, but even more a shame that it has not heeded the warnings of Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the senators warned of “the grave implications this agreement will have for the United States, as well as for Colombia’s population.”

The agreement, which was inherited from the Bush administration, will make it difficult for the Obama administration to foster a new relationship with the region. Of course, it is not too late. President Barack Obama could still break with the militaristic policies of his predecessor that used the pretext of the “war on terror” and “war on drugs” to impose its views on the region.

Instead, President Obama could embrace a serious political agenda that multilaterally addresses the real problems in the region. President Obama would offer an important gesture to the region if he heeded the invitation to meet with UNASUR’s member-states and discuss the bases in Colombia***.

This agreement may allow the U.S. military to complete some of its regional objectives and it may strengthen the Pentagon’s allies in Colombia, at least in the short-term, but it will not contribute to stability or peace in Colombia, much less the region.

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***(President Obama refused to meet with the leaders of South America.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for bringing this material. Will return to read it later today.

It's better now if people start to focus on what has been happening, after all.

Why should we have to repeat the hideous crimes of VietNam which made careers, and fortunes for military industrialists?

[EFerrari]

2. I left a reply at The Hill, see if they post it.

No reg required, just name and email.

[Braulio]

3. You don't make sense at all

If the USA wanted to invade Venezuela, it sure as heck wouldn't do it from Colombia. It doesn't make sense. The US already has base access in Aruba, and it can bring in carrier battle groups and choke it off with no trouble at all.

Also, the FARC isn't the Viet Cong - any outside aid it gets has to come via the jungle routes, and there's no friendly North Viet nam sending in troops.

Finally, Colombia happens to have a democratically elected President who is wildly popular and is backed in his efforts to wipe out the FARC - which he seems to be doing quite successfully.

My conclusion? You're wildly off the mark. In a contest between Colombia and Venezuela, Colombia is larger, is backed by the USA, its people are definitely closing ranks behind Uribe, and the new US technology is probably going to consign the FARC to the dustbin of history.

[Peace Patriot]

4. You are calling a country where thousands of union leaders have been murdered by

the Colombian military and rightwing paramilitary death squads with very close ties to the Uribe government, democratic?

And that doesn't even begin to tally the death toll in Colombia--of human rights workers, political leftists, community organizers, peasant farmers and any who dare speak up for the poor or against the government. Amnesty International attributes 92% of the murders of union leaders to the Colombian military (about half) and its rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). And a recent UN human rights report attributed 75% of all political murders (union leaders and all others) to the same parties--Colombia's military and its death squads. Colombia furthermore has at least 2.9 million displaced people!--one of the worst displacement crises on earth--many of them fled to Venezuela and Ecuador, mostly fleeing the Colombian military and its death squads and its protected drug lords. Colombia also has one of the biggest rich/poor discrepancies in the world--poverty is endemic and goes unaddressed.

Conditions for democratic elections do NOT exist in Colombia. Polls and votes are not valid in these conditions--in conditions in which you can get your head blown off for speaking your mind, which has happened to peaceful protestors recently in Colombia. More bodies of the 'disappeared' are constantly being dug up. Colombia has the second worst human rights record in the world.

It is absurd to believe that Alvaro Uribe--who got his start as the go-to guy for the Medellin Cartel, and graduated to being the go-to guy for the Bush Cartel--is "wildly popular" in Colombia. Do you suppose the pollsters found those 2.9 million displaced people, to poll them? Do you suppose they can vote?

These are extremely poor people, who have trouble enough acquiring the meagerest of shelters (if any) and the meagerest of diets. Many have been driven from their small farms, have no other means to feed themselves and their children, and are uneducated and have no other skills. Their communities have been massively disrupted. Their homes and communities are gone. They have been subjected to bullying, threats and violence, and many have seen their friends and family members mistreated or killed. And a good number of them are suffering from toxic pesticide pollution, in addition to everything else--that cursed US "gift" to Colombia that has driven many peasants from their farms. The toxic pesticides used to eradicate coca plants damages human DNA, as well as killing plants and animals.

How many of these poor, sick, hungry, jobless, homeless, displaced people vote, hm? How many can speak their minds? How many are permitted to organize, to choose candidates for office, to campaign--or even have the energy to do so? Or the money? Do they dare speak freely, when tens of thousands of them are too afraid to even register as displaced persons?

"Colombian government figures are reporting over 2.9 million people registered as internally displaced persons as of February 28, 2009. And recently, a high-level Colombian official admitted to me that around 30 percent of displaced people do not seek registration for fear of reprisals or lack of knowledge of the process. There are also over 500,000 Colombians who have fled the country altogether. This amounts to one in every ten Colombians having been forcibly displaced because of the violence. Let me repeat, that’s 10 percent of the entire population of Colombia."

http://www.refugeesinternational.org/blog/humanitarian-crisis-colombia-impossible-deny-evidence

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10% of the Colombian population is living in displaced misery--extremely poor, with nothing, and subject to rightwing coercion and violence. And how many more are extremely poor, but not yet displaced? How many more are being bullied and threatened? How many have seen their political advocates cut down--shot, 'disappeared,' chainsawed and their body parts thrown into mass graves, as "examples" to all?

These are NOT democratic conditions. They are conditions of great fear and oppression. And if you cannot understand this--if you buy the propaganda that Colombia has "a democratically elected President"--then I have to conclude that you don't know what democracy is.

[Judi Lynn]

5. They've created the SECOND LARGEST HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN THE WORLD

with this multitude of people driven from their own property. What a catastrophe, deliberately directed.

This para domination of the voting places has appeared again and again. Here's a good look at it:COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, May 8 (IPS) - "With Uribe, we thought: this is the guy who is going to change the country," the 41-year-old fisherwoman told IPS.

That is why her fishing and farming village of 800 people in the central Colombian region of Magdalena Medio decided overwhelmingly to vote for current President Álvaro Uribe in the 2002 presidential elections, when he first ran.

The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.

The main city in the fertile region of Magdalena Medio is Barrancabermeja, an oil port on the Magdalena River, which runs across Colombia from south to north before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.

What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say ‘I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them,’ I thought ‘this is a good president’."

When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.

The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.

The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.

"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.

And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.

"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.

"We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials - in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?" said L., who added that the paramilitaries "control everything."

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[Peace Patriot]

6. This is very telling. Where they don't just kill you or yours, they stand over you at the polls....

"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.

"We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials - in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?" said L., who added that the paramilitaries "control everything."

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And the woman is so afraid of retaliation, that she dare not give her name or village.

This is what Braulio calls "a democratically elected president."

[Judi Lynn]

7. Took another quick look for more material on paras at the voting centers.

President Uribe’s Hidden Past
By Tom Feiling · May 24, 2004

~snip~
Noticias Uno told the story of how in 1997, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 50,000 kilos of potassium permanganate from a ship docked in San Francisco. Potassium permanganate is a chemical used in the production of cocaine. The cargo was on its way to Colombia to be delivered to a company called GMP Chemical Products. The owner of GMP was Pedro Moreno Villa GMP, Uribe’s presidential campaign manager. The chemicals seized were sufficient to produce $15 billion worth of cocaine. The DEA confirmed that GMP was Colombia’s biggest importer of potassium permanganate between 1994 and 1998, when Uribe was governor of Medellin and Moreno Villa was his chief of staff.

As the Presidential race intensified, journalists became increasingly concerned that media bosses were threatening their editorial independence. Two powerful business groups with ties to the political establishment own RCN and Caracol, the biggest television and radio networks in Colombia. Journalists’ concerns were further heightened when Uribe picked a member of the Santos family, which owns the country’s most influential daily newspaper, to be his vice-president.

Despite his links to paramilitaries and drug cartels, Uribe won the presidency. But to call Uribe’s victory a landslide—as many in and outside Colombia did—is a gross distortion of the facts. Uribe received 53 percent of the official vote, but only 25 percent of the electorate voted. Many urban and middle class Colombians, who have been largely sheltered from the civil war, were thoroughly disillusioned by the peace process of outgoing-President Andrés Pastrana, and backed hardliner Uribe. But the election was hardly a fair one.

Mapiripán is the site of one of the worst paramilitary massacres to date, yet many of the town’s residents voted for the “paramilitary” candidate, Uribe. Father Javier Giraldo of the Colombian human rights group Justicia y Paz was in Mapiripán on election day: “There was a great deal of fraud. There were paramilitaries in the voting booths. They destroyed a lot of ballots. This was denounced to the Ombudsman, but nothing happened.” Electoral fraud, widespread paramilitary threats—denounced by virtually all the other candidates during the election campaign—and the almost total decimation of the electoral left in the preceding decade all contributed to Uribe’s election victory.

More:
http://colombiajournal.org/colombia185.htm

This is a recurrent theme: paras haunt the voting places in areas where they are strong, and intimidate the voters. Sad, isn't it?

So damned "democratic."