Fw: Colombia - a shift in rhetoric

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 8:42 PM
Subject: Fwd: Colombia - a shift in rhetoric


> 
> -------------------------
> Via Workers World News Service
> Reprinted from the Feb. 1, 2001
> issue of Workers World newspaper
> -------------------------
> 
> BUSH ON COLOMBIA: MORE INTERVENTION , MORE WAR
> 
> By Andy McInerney
> 
> To the surprise of few, the incoming Bush administration is
> promising to continue, and possibly intensify, U.S.
> intervention in Colombia. In particular, administration
> spokespeople have emphasized support for the so-called
> Plan Colombia under which the Clinton administration sent
> $1.3 billion in military and economic assistance to the
> Colombian death-squad government.
> 
> "The new administration will support Plan Colombia," Gen.
> Colin Powell told a U.S. Senate panel on Jan. 17. Powell
> sailed through the confirmation process and is now George W.
> Bush's secretary of state.
> 
> "We believe that this money," Powell told the Senate panel,
> "should be used to help the Colombian government to protect
> its people, fight the illicit drug trade, halt the momentum
> of the guerrillas and ultimately bring about a peaceful and
> sensible resolution to the conflict."
> 
> The Jan. 20 New York Times warned that Colombia "is likely
> to become the most pressing issue on the agenda south of the
> border."
> 
> The Pentagon sent Gen. Peter Pace of the U.S. Southern
> Command to Bogota in the days prior to Bush's inauguration.
> "Obviously the new administration will do its own
> assessment, but we'll meet our obligations to your
> government," he told a Jan. 19 press conference.
> 
> Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid
> in the world. The recent aid package included some 60 combat
> helicopters, counterinsurgency training by U.S. Special
> Forces "advisors," and chemical and biological defoliation
> agents. Two battalions of elite troops are already trained
> and are set to be deployed in southern Colombia this month.
> 
> The Putumayo province where they are being sent is a
> stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-
> People's Army (FARC-EP).
> 
> Also this month, the Colombian government is scheduled to
> receive 33 H-1N Huey combat helicopters. Sixteen more
> advanced Black Hawk helicopters are scheduled to be
> delivered in July. Some of these helicopters carry machine
> guns capable of firing 50 rounds per second, according to a
> Jan. 19 Associated Press report.
> 
> NEW RHETORIC ... SAME OBJECTIVE
> 
> While overall Pentagon backing for the Colombian government
> is set to continue, the Bush administration's war propaganda
> shows some differences with the Clinton administration.
> 
> Clinton advertised the aid as part of the "war on drugs."
> His administration vigorously denied involvement in the war
> against the revolutionary movement. Democratic Senators
> attached human-rights clauses onto the aid legislation.
> 
> Such rhetoric was meant for public consumption only. Clinton
> waived the human-rights clauses in the days before
> delivering the aid--just a week after Colombian military
> troops fired on a group of schoolchildren in September,
> killing six. In his last days in office, Clinton
> administration lawyers argued that the waiver does not even
> apply to upcoming disbursements of military aid.
> 
> Some voices in the Bush camp are expressing doubts over the
> drug-war rhetoric. Right-wing columnist George Will noted in
> a Jan. 18 article that "Colombia's drug-related agonies are
> largely traceable to U.S. cities." He called Plan Colombia's
> stated objective of completely eradicating Colombia's coca
> and poppy production in five years "delusional."
> 
> Incoming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was more
> blunt. Speaking to the Senate panel that would confirm him,
> he called the drug problem "overwhelmingly a demand
> problem."
> 
> "If demand persists, it's going to get what it wants. And if
> it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace
> else," he said.
> 
> Combined with Powell's statement that continued military aid
> to the Colombian government would be to "halt the guerrilla
> momentum," these admissions point to the inevitable change
> of rhetoric that accompanies a new political regime in
> Washington.
> 
> COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS NOT A POLICY
> 
> The driving force behind the escalating U.S. intervention
> has never been the war on drugs. Nor has it been
> "strengthening Colombian democracy" or "protecting
> Colombia's people." U.S. intervention in Colombia is nothing
> short of an attempt to shore up the tottering Colombian
> government in the face of a powerful revolutionary movement
> led by the FARC-EP.
> 
> This counter-revolutionary role is not a policy of the U.S.
> government that may change from administration to
> administration. It is a fundamental feature of modern U.S.
> imperialism, by which the Pentagon fights at all costs to
> defend and extend the area that U.S. banks and corporations
> exploit and plunder--against both imperialist rivals and
> revolutionary and popular challenges.
> 
> Colombia is a country where the contradictions between the
> exploited classes on the one hand and the exploiting classes
> and their U.S. backers on the other have intensified to the
> point of armed conflict. The FARC-EP and the National
> Liberation Army (ELN) represent the desires of millions of
> Colombians for a country free of the big landowners and
> International Monetary Fund austerity.
> 
> The form of U.S. intervention--overt or covert, with
> "advisors" or with ground troops--will depend on many
> factors, including both the strength of the revolutionary
> movement in Colombia and the strength of the anti-war
> movement in the United States. The Pentagon undoubtedly
> dreads the specter of seeing U.S. workers, students and
> others enraged by GIs dying in Colombian jungles.
> 
> But the drive to war goes deeper than the wishes of Pentagon
> generals and State Department planners. The Pentagon's war
> in Vietnam grew from less than 1,000 U.S. "advisors" in 1960
> to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops that saw combat
> there in less than a decade. The cycle of intervention flows
> from imperialism's nature as surely as a hungry predator
> will fight to the death for a morsel of food.
> 
> The Bush administration's transparent rhetoric about
> intervention in Colombia will give activists in the United
> States an opportunity to expose U.S. intervention in Latin
> America to a wider circle of workers and students--like the
> thousands who demonstrated for the first time against Bush's
> inauguration on Jan. 20.
> 
> It can form the basis for a wave of resistance to U.S.
> intervention that can at the same time challenge imperialism
> and extend a hand of solidarity to the struggling people of
> Colombia.