| US support for the right-wing death squads in Columbia provides more ammunition for recruiters of terrorists around the world and should not be renewed by Congress. |
| One of the most troubling incidents there [in Columbia] happened in February, when eight members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó were massacred, including four children. One of the victims was community leader and founder Luis Eduardo Guerra. Evidence points to the Colombian army as the authors of this crime.
The San Jose de Apartado massacre is consistent with past years, when human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have relentlessly accused the Colombia Army of having extensive links to right wing paramilitary death squads. Those death squads have primarily attacked civilians rather than the government's civil war opponents, the leftist guerillas of FAR C. Those guerrillas are the main reason Plan Colombia's aid has steadily shifted from drug-interdictment to the even messier business of being directly involved in Colombia's long running, 45-year-old civil war. Next week's vote will be the first time Plan Colombia itself, rather than budgetary allocations for it, will come up for a Congressional vote -- and the first time that Plan Colombia will have come up for a vote in the context of the War on Terror. To that end, the Bush administration has actually been painting FARC as a terrorist threat to the U.S. -- even though no evidence for such outlandish claims exists, and FARC has had 45 years to declare that the U.S. is a target. Instead, they are very much focused on the urban areas of Colombia, being concentrated in the jungle areas of Colombia's south and east. Every time that the U.S. is caught acting like a bully in the world, especially among the world's poorest, that fact is noted by Muslims from Morocco to the Philippines. In order to shift the catastrophic momentum in Iraq, the U.S. must first convince the Iraq people -- and the rest of the Muslim world -- that the U.S. is sincere in its protestations that it is a force for justice and good. That's a hard case to make if Congress is cozying up to paramilitary thugs in Colombia. Source: "Plan Colombia up for a vote" by Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com - 06.23.05 |
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