US Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp
MANTA, Ecuador - Military and diplomatic sources see a link between the Manta air base, operated by the United States in Ecuadorean territory, and this month’s bombing raid by Colombia on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador.
The U.S. air force was granted a 10-year concession in 1999 to use the base, located in the port city of Manta on Ecuador’s northern Pacific coast, in its counter-drug trafficking activities in the region.
A high-level Ecuadorean military officer, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IPS that “a large proportion of senior officers” in Ecuador share “the conviction that the United States was an accomplice in the attack” launched Mar. 1 by the Colombian military on a FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) camp in Ecuador, near the Colombian border.
FARC’s international spokesman Raúl Reyes and 24 other people were killed in the bombing raid, which prompted Quito to break off diplomatic relations with Colombia, although ties were restored several days later.
“Since Plan Colombia was launched in 2000, a strategic alliance between the United States and Colombia has taken shape, first to combat the insurgents and later to involve neighbouring countries in that war,” said the officer. “What is happening today is a consequence of that.”
Plan Colombia is a U.S.-financed and supported counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy carried out by Bogotá.
The information gathered by IPS from military and diplomatic sources indicates that the Manta air base played a role in locating, and carrying out reconnaissance of, the FARC camp in Ecuador.
Ecuadorean Defence Minister Wellington Sandoval said there should be an investigation of whether the Manta air base was used for the attack on the rebel camp in Ecuador. According to the agreement signed by Washington and Quito, it is the Ecuadorean armed forces that should carry out such a probe.
The Manta air base lease clearly stipulates that the base can only be used for counter-narcotics operations.
Sandoval said he cannot provide any information until an investigation has been conducted.
The military source who spoke to IPS said that what should be verified “above all are the flights from the base in the 20 days prior to the bombing, who was on them, the routes they took, and what they were investigating. This data should be complemented by other inquiries and information.”
On Mar. 13, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador said she had had “a conversation with (U.S.) Ambassador Linda Jewell who ensured us that the planes (at the base) were not involved in any way” in the bombing of the FARC camp.
But the military source said that “the technology used, first to locate the target, in other words the camp, and later to attack it, was from the United States.”
Sandoval declared that “equipment that the Latin American armed forces do not have” was used in the Mar. 1 bombing.
“They dropped around five ’smart bombs’,” the kind used by the United States in the First Gulf War (1991), “with impressive precision and a margin of error of just one metre, at night, from planes travelling at high speeds,” said the minister.
The military source said that “an attack with smart bombs requires pilots who have experience in such operations, which means U.S. pilots. That’s why I think they did the job and later told the Colombians ‘now go in and find the bodies’, which is when Colombian helicopters and troops showed up” at the site of the raid.
According to the official version of events that the Colombian government gave an Organisation of American States (OAS) fact-finding commission that visited both countries, 10 “conventional” bombs were dropped from five Brazilian-made Super Tucano aircraft and three U.S.-made A-37 planes.
The A-37s dropped bombs guided by GPS (Global Positioning System) and the five Super Tucanos have the technological means to launch bombs at targets with a five-metre margin of error, said the OAS delegation’s report.
But according to the sources who spoke to IPS, the U.S. role in the incident could have been even greater.
The military officer said the bombing raid in Ecuadorean air space was actually led by “U.S. pilots, possibly from DynCorp,” a U.S.-based private military contractor that has contracts under Plan Colombia.
The aircraft took off from the Tres Esquinas air base in the southern Colombian department of Caquetá, said the source.
“The planes used to fumigate coca crops or to attack the guerrillas are piloted by serving members of the U.S. military or (former) military men at the service of companies like DynCorp,” said the officer.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said on Mar. 15 that his government would not allow “any foreign soldier, whether regular or irregular, to affect the soil of our fatherland. That is why there will be no more foreign bases after 2009.”
U.S. usage rights for Manta expire on Nov. 12, 2009.
A committee in the Constituent Assembly that is rewriting the Ecuadorean constitution approved the chapter on territorial sovereignty on Mar. 17.
One of the articles states that “Ecuador is a territory of peace. The establishment of foreign military bases, or foreign installations for military purposes, is not permitted. National military bases cannot be leased to foreign security forces.”
In its refusal to renew the air base lease, Ecuador can argue “many causes: direct or indirect participation (by U.S. forces from Manta) in the bombing; negligence for failure to detect the FARC camp with their technology, first of all, and the attack, in second place; and, in case they did detect the camp and the raid, for failing to inform authorities in the partner country, Ecuador,” said a diplomatic source who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity.
Another reason that could be set forth is the direct support that the U.S. Southern Command, under which the U.S. armed forces at the Manta air base operate, has provided the Colombian military.
Admiral James Stavridis, the commander of the Southern Command, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Mar. 6 that he was monitoring the movement of Ecuadorean and Venezuelan troops to the Colombian border.
Stavridis said that with continuous U.S. support, Colombia has won “hard-fought successes” in the armed conflict. He added that “this key strategic ally” was making irreversible progress towards peace and against “terrorism.”
He also told the Senate Committee that the FARC had been reduced from 17,500 guerrillas in 2002 to around 9,000 today.
In July 2001, retired colonel Fausto Cobo, former director of the Ecuadorean army’s Escuela de Guerra (war collage), had told IPS that “Manta, for the purposes of Plan Colombia,” is a “U.S. aircraft carrier, on land.”
By April 2001, when work began on the expansion of the Manta air strip, an average of 100 troops were taking part in up to three missions a day in F-3 reconnaissance planes.
A diplomatic source from the United States told Britain’s Financial Times at the time that by October the number would go up by 200, and by 200 more within the following few months.
After the expansion of the air strip, bigger, more sophisticated aircraft began to be used for reconnaissance missions.
Manta is one of the four “forward operating locations” (FOLs), along with Curaçao, Aruba and El Salvador, that make up the U.S. network of counter-narcotics bases in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In August 2006, the Expreso de Guayaquil newspaper reported that Colombian pilots were operating alongside Ecuadorean pilots on flights out of the Manta air base.
The commander of an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) squadron based out of Manta, Rich Boyd, told the Guayaquil newspaper that one of the AWACS aircraft was operated by a Colombian air force officer.
But Boyd said that each country’s sensitive and confidential information is protected, because the Colombian officer exits the cockpit when the plane is in Ecuadorean air space, and the Ecuadorean pilot leaves when the plane overflies Colombia.
According to Boyd, three of the U.S. military’s 27 AWACS were at the Manta base. Each one has a price tag of one billion dollars — nearly double the entire 2005 budget of the Ecuadorean air force.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
Obviously our Congress has decided to wage an undeclared war against Ecuador. Do we get to send them to the ICC now?
Connection between Richard Grasso and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) (Commonly FARC) Perhaps its just a reorganization of the supply end of the illicit drug trade.
The scene of this crime looks completly flattened and burned. Why such large bombs on sleeping people in tents? Since when are such such mass-summary-extrajucicial executions justifiable?
The United States’ illegal and unprovoked attacks on innocent countries around the world are events that occur everyday of the week 52 weeks a year. When are the citizens of my country going to wakeup and recognize we are in the thrall of a totally rogue government. The question of who actually runs this rogue government is the one that the mainstream media and the US Conress are afraid to investigate. Why? Because the answer would illustrate Mussolini’s definition of fascism — a nation controled by a secret alliance between a nation’s illegally elected government and its major corporations (particularly Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex) and the mainstream media itself (NBC/GE, ABS/Disney, CBS/Viacom, CNN/Time-Warner, MSNBC/GE & Microsoft, and FOX/News Corp). Sound familiar?
I’m not in any way in favor of US military actions anywhere in South America, but I’m also not going to cry any crocodile tears for the FARC. In addition to their direct involvement in the cocaine trade, they were also involved in the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of a former president of Paraguay. They are not heroes.
USAn
They flattened a couple skyscrapers a few years back what makes you think people in tents are treated any different.
BillBushnell is correct it’s called Fascism plan and simple.
US Banks & Corporations are the largest beneficiary of the cocaine trade thru laudering of cash. US residents are the largest users of cocaine from Columbia, mostly in the upper middle class and the very wealthy class.
The CIA & Military are known to be involved in the trafficing of cocaine, NOT stopping its production and decimination.
http://www.infocollective.org/dalescottabstract.html
http://www.wethepeople.la/montal1.htm
Few articles mention the AUC, the right-wing paramilitary group in Colombia that has murdered far more people than the FARC, and is also far more heavily involved in the cocaine trade to the United States. This is partly because the U.S. military just isn’t as concerned with targeting them.
The AUC and related right wing paramilitaries still maintain corrupt ties with the U.S.-supported Colombian government. They assassinate and terrorize peaceful campesino activists, unionists, and their families, to the benefit of foreign corporations like Coca Cola who want to keep wages down and working conditions sub-human. Such human rights violations have actually increased since the start of Plan Colombia while cocaine consumption in the U.S. has barely gone down, and U.S. officials still call it a “success.” That’s because Plan Colombia is successfully quelling dissent against horrible living and working conditions in Colombia.
Also, under Plan Colombia planes are fumigating food crops of peasants who are already struggling to make ends meet. Many peasants cultivate coca because the Colombian government does not adequately support its small farmers who need to compete against cheap U.S.-subsidized imports, much like Mexico. Unfortunately, as long as these conditions exist, there will be a ready pool of desperate, devastated campesinos willing to take up arms with the FARC.
Thanks for the info re the AUC, cheencheen. Not surprising that very few Americans know about them and their ties to the US.
Ecuador will probably ask the US to leave the base when their 10 year concession expires next year.
“US Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp”
Gee, what a surprise.
dgoogn
Nobody asked you to cry crocodile tears for any organization. Who cares if you do or not?
The FARC camp was bombed (possibly by US mercenaries) without the permission of the Ecuadorean government.
Also, one Ecudorean citizen and several Mexican students were murdered by the unprovoked bombing.
Furthermore, Reyes was the chief FARC negotiator that was chosen to gain the release of kidnapped prisoners.
But why does FARC exist?
FARC emerged only after the Colombian oligarchy cut off all avenues for redress of grievances by campesino, worker, student and professional organizations.
In fact, because peasants didn’t want to get caught up in the murderous La Violencia fought between the Liberal and Conservative factions of the oligarchy, many resettled themselves to the south of the La Violencia war zone.
Of course, they weren’t allowed to live peacefully in their self-declared “peace villages” for very long.
This mass resettlement was too much. The two murderous factions of the oligarchy finally united to violently place these resettled peasants back under control.
Thus, the FARC emerged as a defensive organization in order to fight off these bloody invasions and attacks. To emphasize, the once intrafatricidal Colombian oligarchy now had a target that, at last, united them.
They now divert their murderous rage against their organized lower-classes rather than each other.
If you were part of an organization fighting such a bloodthirsty oligarchy, an oligarchy that destroyed billions of dollars worth of property and murdered thousands of innocent peoples during its oligarchy vs. oligarchy civil war, what tactics would you use?
Remember, this blood soaked oligarchy also has the technical, material, propaganda, and financial support of an enormous superpower, the USA.
Tell me. What would you do?
For example, the anti-Nazi Resistance in Europe used many of the same tactics the FARC has used when fighting the overwhelming combination of Nazi military power, national plutocrats, and many pro-Nazi supporters and informers.
Of course! Youe answer: You would not cry crocodile tears for members of the Resistance (i.e., terrorists) who were murdered en mass by the Wehrmacht, Nazi SS (the official death squad) with local police conivance, national military support.
What strikes me about this article is the phrase: “military men at the service of companies like DynCorp”.
Who the hell is DynCorp?
Our worst nightmare is coming into being - corporate armies with no accountability killing dissenters abroad, and eventually here too, who dare to stand in the way of their seizure of all natural resources.
The same corporations, by the way, who elect congress and the president…
Further confirmation that the U.S. anti-drug strategy is nothing more than a cover to keep oppressing the workers and peasants of Latin America.
Balakirev,
You raise some valid points. There is often a gray area where the actions of a particular group could be interpreted in a number of different ways. I would concede the benefit of the doubt in some of these gray areas, but consider the following.
Regardless of the reasons for which the FARC was formed, it’s members have been linked to a number of incidents that could only be considered war crimes, including mass killing of non-combatants who were passengers on a stalled bus in Cacueta, murder of civiilans using gas cylinder bombs prior to the 2006 elections in Montebonito and murder of elected council members in Rivera. To the best of my knowledge the French resistance did not murder it’s own civilians, nor did they murder German civilians, although I am willing to accept any evidence that you might provide that they did. Also, your comparison of the FARC with the Maquis falls down because the Maquis were fighting a foreign invader, whereas the FARC are not.
You should understand that I am not condemning the cause for which the FARC are (in theory) fighting. However, I reject the use of terror, murder, or deliberate attacks on civilians regardless of who is using them or what their political stripe is. Someone pointed out earlier that right wing organization are using similar tactics. That’s correct, and their are equally despicable, as are the tactics used by the government. I don’t care a whit why they are doing what they are doing — wrong is wrong. Personally, I don’t believe any of these groups (including the US) give a damn about the campesinos. They want power and money and are willing to kill, traffic drugs, kidnap civilians, and commit other crimes to get it. As I said before, they are not heroes.
And, as an aside, I’d like to ask you without rancour to please not put words in my mouth. You don’t know a thing about me, so please extend me the courtesy of letting me speak for myself.
Well, I’m not going to cry about the death of a bunch of murderous kidnappers and their #2 leader. Has Ecuador ever explained why the FARC, who they disavow, is using their territory as a base for attacks on Columbia?
Bush is the worst president in our history. .His lying and treachery have alienated every country in South America.
The United States is hated world wide. .In 7 short years the U.S. has lost its economy. .Today Oil producing countries around the globe are reducing their sales to the U.S.A.. .They have doubled their prices (record high of $112/a barrel), and are requiring payment in Euros or gold bullion.
Our Imperial Armed Forces are broken, and our economy has been sliding into a deep recession for over 15 months.
This Mad CowBoy should be IMPEACHED before he gets us into another shooting war that we cannot win.
IMPEACH both BUSH and CHENEY ………………NOW !!!!!!!!!!!
Ah, the madness of the U.S. empire goes on and on and on trying to fill an ever growing belly endlessly hungry for more and more power. Sooner or later — it will fall of its own weight as those of the past have fallen — crushed by the trillions of tons of its own imbalance.
balakirev said:
“murderous La Violencia fought between the Liberal and Conservative factions of the oligarchy…”
The fight was between the conservative left wing hegemonists and the conservative right wing oligarchs. Liberals are pacifists and witnesses.
This didn’t start in 2000. I used to work with an ex-marine sniper who killed people in Columbia back in the 1990s. Then it was “drugs” now it’s “terrorism”. Blah, blah, blah. The propaganda marches on and the people follow without question.
Sure, it helps to blow up some buildings and blame it on “terrorists”, but they were killing people in other countries before. The only difference with Bush is that he has taken the mask of democracy off, and exposed US imperialism for the nasty brutal thing it is.
dgoodin-
I agree with your perspective, being against terrorism and violence no matter what the cause. I feel the same way.
However, I was bringing up the right wing paramilitaries to illustrate that the U.S. and Colombia have a double standard when addressing terrorism - they rightfully condemn left-wing terrorism, but wrongfully condone right-wing terrorism (and in many cases they support it).
I bring this up not to bitch about the U.S. and Colombia, but to stress how vital it is that we understand the history of what we’re dealing with. We need to understand how such groups form, such as balakirev’s brief description of the history of the FARC. This doesn’t excuse what they do, but it’s the only way we will make any meaningful steps toward peace. If we understand that groups like FARC form out of desperation and repression of the people, we understand that the best way, and really the ONLY way to dissolve the FARC is to stop repressing poor farmers with policies that only benefit politicians and corporations. It’s a slow process, but the only logical and peaceful one I can think of.
We also need to be honest in our approach. As long as the U.S. condemns one form of terrorism, but supports another, it is not going to effectively bring peace anywhere.
The path that the U.S. and Colombia are following now is to use more force and repression along with the failed policies that exacerbated this problem to begin with. It’s a policy of giving arms to the enemy of your enemy, even if he is also a terrorist. As we see all over the Middle East, this only leads to more anger, violence, and devastation on all sides.
In part, this is about regime change in Ecuador. They dare to kick out our military from Manta, we give them a taste of what is to come. They also have mucho gold resources.
Ecuador destroyed 46 FARC camps last year. These are mobile camps, they do not bring attention to themselves. We have all kinds of people coming across our borders, what would we do if Mexico bombed our territory claiming some of them were terrorists. Also, supposedly Ecuador was negotiating the release of hostages. But we have become of nation of sophists, so far from reality as to be delusional.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0310/p07s02-wogn.htm
Columbias president is himself a terorist and drug profiteer, Funny how our allies in the region tend to be despots who get elected by fraud and then reverse democracy. Our enemies seem to be democracies.
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia185.htm
This is also about Venezuela. The War on Terrorism is coming to South America, and of course, coincidentally, Venezuela has loads of oil, wants to nationalize it’s oil industry, and is dumping the dollar.
I have nothing good to say about FARC. But lets remember who has supported them and the drug trade. Dope Inc. The British and Wall Street masterminds of the FARC project provided direct financial links between the major financial centers and the FARC for years. Maybe we should seize their assets for supporting terrorism and drugs.
This crisis plays into the hands of the Anglo-American imperialism.
Reyes’s computers were seized by Colombian military forces in the March 1 assault on a FARC encampment inside Ecuador. The attack was precipitated by Chávez’s granting of “belligerant status” to it, and we are going to link Venezuela and Ecuador to terrorism, since we define what is terrorism and what is not. Your either with us or against us. Against us, you are terrorist. For us, like Israel or Al Qaeda members when they were our ally in Afghanistan and the Balkans, and you are not terrorists.
From EIR (subsciption only)
June 26-29, 1999: New York Stock Exchange president Richard Grasso visits the giant FARC-controlled enclave in southern Colombia on June 26, to personally make a deal with the FARC. Upon his return, he calls FARC leaders such as Raúl Reyes “extraordinary” and “sophisticated,” wel-
coming them as future partners in the New York Stock Exchange(see “Raúl Reyes and the ‘Grasso Abrazo,’ ” EIR, March 14, 2008). In a June 29 editorial, the Wall Street Journal joins the clamor for legalizing the FARC and its “capital”: “Mr. Reyes . . . is profitable, he’s global and he’s
strategically positioned. Stay tuned, the NYSE chairman is said to have offered the guerrilla a floor tour of the exchange. What’s next, an IPO?”
June 28, 1999: An IMF spokesman confirms to EIR, on the record, that it was on IMF instructions that Colombia had begun including “illicit crops” in its official agricultural statistics, thus legalizing the drug economy. Bolivia has been told to do the same, he said. Ideally, heroin should be included, but the value of that product is hard to calculate.
Jan. 22, 2000: Grasso returns to Colombia, with America On-Line (AOL) founder Jim Kimsey, American Express chief James Robinson, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and others, to constitute the so-called Millennium Group, to advise Colombia’s then-President Andrés Pastrana
on the economic and financial side of a “peace” deal with the FARC. The organizer of the meeting is former JP Morgan officer Violy McCausland.
Feb. 1, 2000: Reyes and six other comandantes begin a 23-day, six-nation, all-expenses-paid trip to Europe, where they are received like royals to discuss “peace.” When over, Reyes declares that the European nations “put us on the same level as the government,” thus granting “de facto belligerent
status.”
February 2000: U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tells a House of Representatives hearing that the FARC’s European tour is “very encouraging.”
March 4, 2000: AOL’s Kimsey and real estate baron Joseph Robert meet FARC Commander Marulanda (alias “Sureshot”) Reyes and others, in the FARC’s jungle enclave. At the end, Kimsey and Marulanda exchange FARC and AOL caps.
March 20, 2000: Kimsey and Robert publish an op-ed in the Washington Times, reporting that they have just returned from discussing “the new global economy” with the FARC. They call for the FARC to come visit the U.S. Congress and speak directly to the American people.
March 28, 2000: John Battle, Britain’s Minister of State with responsibility for Latin America, tells the House of Commons that Tony Blair’s government has informed the Colombian government that London, too, “would welcome” a visit by a joint FARC-Colombian government mission. He also promises various MPs calling for drug legalization, that the
Blair government is focussing on “the economics of the drug market internationally,” as part of “that wider analysis of the drug trade.”
March 30, 2000: Accusing the U.S. government of “forgetting their own free-market principles,” the FARC issues a communiqué calling upon the United States to legalize drug consumption, inviting U.S. Congressmen to send a delegation to “their” territory, to get a first-hand tour of coca planta-
tions.”
Obviously, that didn’t work out, and today, they be terrorists and we can justify action against those who support them.
Next President gets to do Venezuela as we rescue the people from Chavez and put in a Pinochet or Uribe like ruler.
dgoogn
I don’t want to put words into anyone’s mouth and I didn’t think I did. I simply asked, “What would you do if you found yourself within the same historical, economic, political and social situation?”
By the way, the Norwegian anti-Nazis killed many civilians when they blew up a ferry they (and British intelligence) believed was carrying the rare, special type of water needed to produce atomic weapons.
The anti-Nazi resistance killed many non-political civilians in order to destroy trains, infrastructure,etc. In addition, they killed anyone they thought a traitor, an informer, and/or expendible. Sometimes, they would kill whole families of such designated peoples.
And, of course,the Allies resorted to the terror bombing of major European and East Asian cities…knowlingly killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Of course, the Allie’s reliance on air terrorism lead to the greatest terrorist acts of the 20th c., the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. (In mainstream American intellectual and historical circles,both terror bombings are rationalized as necessary…the ideological underpinning of all state and non-state terrorist acts)
I believe of the architect of the air terror campaign over Germany, Bomber Harris readily admitted that if Germany won the war, he would be in the dock as a war criminal.
Unfortunately, it is easy to be judgemental about the use of terrorism as a political weapon. Unfortunately, it seems to work.
It did for the ANC is South Africa.
As long as the world is horribly unequal, terrorism will be usually be one among many weapons resorted to when any group, organization or nation attempt to redress this inequality.
And as both sides in these conflicts resort to using the political technique of terrorism, many times they will negotiate behind the scenes in order to refashion the stratification system that was/is the basis of their conflict.
Unfortunately, the basis of the “terrorist” problem as with many others is: those with the most needs have the least power; those with the least needs have the most power.
The US elite are the elite of an elite nation; as a result, our national forces of violence are constantly used to maintain both the elite status of our plutocrats and the elite status of the US.
In otherwords, because of our double elite position within the world hierarchical system, the US is greatest user, sponser and supporter of official and non-official terrorism.
Where you find an atrocity, the CIA is rarely far away.
We better pressure the government to leave the people of South America alone to govern themselves. Where do you think you are going to retire to? The United States is already unlivable for anyone on Social Security. There is already an out migration to South American countries by retirees who cannot afford medical care or living expenses in the U.S. That trend is increasing.
Narcotics demand in the US is strongly reinforced by the capitalist’s marketing campaigns to addict Americans to the capitalist’s opiates. The first order delusion that narcotics, but not the others, are destructive must be propagated to keep the progressive hounds off the scent of the capitalist beast. A black or white world must be maintained so when it’s time to rally the rabble behind the latest military cry, the choice is simple. Never allow the rabble to contemplate what is real.
“Where you find an atrocity, the CIA is rarely far away.” Thanks for reminding me. Where was Heinz?
How many countries is the US planning to destroy? We’ve destroyed our own country-we’ve destroyed Iraq-now we’re mucking around agin in still another country? Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful.
CheenCheen:
We are in agreement. The double standards are disgraceful.
Balakiev:
Again, you raise valid points but I stand by my original assessment. If you re-read my original post, you’ll note that I was not defending the bombing that killed the FARC members and others, I was simply noting that I felt no inclination to mourn the FARC losses. Also, I am not necessarily against the cause of the FARC (although I believe that they are no longer serving any cause, see below), I am opposed to their tactics. In fact, I believe that they have essentially gone over to the other side. They are left-wing totalitarian bullies — no different than the right-wing totalitarian bullies who they are fighting.
As far as I’m concerned, there are differences between civilian losses as a result of combat operations, and civilian losses due to deliberate murder. Of course, the difference is a matter of degree, but I do see it as a difference. You mentioned the Nagasaki/Hiroshima example, and to a certain extent I agree with you. However, one should always consider the effect that an invasion might have had on the civilian population, not to mention the appalling loss of life that might have occurred due to combat casulties on both sides. These are tough decisions, I’m glad I didn’t have to make them. If I had, I think I would have dropped the first A-bomb in an obvious but uninhabited place (maybe over the ocean near Tokyo?) then sent the Japanese government a message telling them that I had more of those things, and that if they didn’t surrender, the next one was coming down on their heads. Maybe it would have helped — maybe not.
Since you mentioned Bomber Harris (who, if written records are any guide, was a pretty unpleasant human being), I’ll use an example from WWII to illustrate what I would consider acceptable vs. unacceptable. In my view the strategic bombing of Schweinfurt in 1943 was justified even though it took about 250 civilian lives. It was justified because the purpose was to degrade the enemy’s warmaking capacity. This would not be a war crime. On the other hand, the bombing of Dresden would be a war crime, because the city had no strategic value and was not defended. It was bombed simply because it had not been targeted yet. That’s criminal, in my opinion. In the case of the resistance fighters you mentioned, often the executions were of those who collaborated with the invaders — contrast this with the FARC, who executed three Americans simply because they “thought” they were from the CIA. When the FARC finally admitted their error (much later) they agreed to punish those involved. The punishment consisted of making the guilty dig a ditch — essentially the same punishment I got when I dented my mother’s car back in high school! This event, probably more than any other, led to the Human Right Watch labeling FARC as a terrorist organization.
So, again, I assert that these people are terrorists. La Violencia has been over for about forty years now and clearly the FARC has failed. In my opinion, it’s current leadership is interested only in how much money it can make from drugs, extortion, etc. These are not heroes — they are thorough-going bastards.
This will be my last word on the subject (busy, busy!) but I will stop by to read a response, if you want to post one.
Cheers.
dogoodin
Thanks for the response.
Unfortunately, La Violencia was only one episode of the series of horrific civil wars that have bloodied the history of post-independence Colombia.
In fact, one could view the earlier civil war between the Medellin drug cartel (the new oligarchy) and the old oligarchy as a continuation of this history.
For example, Uribe’s father was supposedly executed by the FARC. However, his father (a member of the old landowning class) was actually, by some accounts, ready to be extradited to the US to face drug charges.
Thus the drug war was/is actually between the old elite who had earlier monopolized the drug trade and the new elite who had organized the cartels ot break into the monopoly.
Of course, peasant, union, and community organizers were so much collateral damage in this new version of La Violencia.
The sad fact is that if the US and the old oligarchy have their way and destroy the FARC and the smaller revolutionary movements, it will narrow the possibilities of the lower-classes.
The FARC is under constant pressure of attack, infiltration and surveillance. Anyone suspected of supporting them (”innocent” or not) has a short shelf life.
The FARC doesn’t have access to helicopter gunships, satellite surveillence, huge mainframe computers, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, the largess and military support and training of the US, etc.
The FARC leadership has attempted to work out a political solution to the conflict, but the US and the Uribe government aren’t really interested. They want a military solution…to the death.
Unfortunately, this is the history of the Colombian oligarchy; an oligarchy whose murderous tendencies are enabled by the US.
So, if FARC was headed by Jesus Christ, and its members wanted their organization to survive, what measures would be taken in the face of such an unequal and merciless and continous assault?
And even if the FARC’s leadership and many of its members surrendered to the Uribe government, what type of treatment could they expect? And I’m not talking about fake amnesties, I’m talking about midnight knocks on the door followed by disappearances.
Already, democratic Leftists, critical journalists, human rights activists and union organizers are regularly murdered and/or terrorized by the military, police and the still active death squads.
In fact, many members of the present pro-US Uribe government have been found to have multiple links to the Right-wing militias (i.e., death squads). Of course, these revelations have not damaged the standing of the Uribe government with the US nor the oligarchy and its upper-middle class supporters.
So, even if an individual was part of a general FARC surrender, and this individual then took part in any form of “legal” opposition to the Colombian oligarchy, how long would she or he survive? What about their family members?
So, the conflict in Colombia is not between equals. One side has the state, military, the financial support of the business elite, much of the drug trade, the national media and the might of the US on its side…the other side doesn’t.
Egad! Now Cheney/Bush are waging war against Egypt.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A U.S. military security team on a cargo ship transiting the Suez Canal Monday fired warning shots at a small Egyptian boat when it got too close, U.S. officials said.
“fascism plain and simple”, “like Mussolini said”?
NOPE, and on both. Mussolini clearly explained this too. He said that what people sometimes refer to as fascism, because the govt is the main implement, is not fascism, but CORPORTISM.
What’s going on with U.S. criminality in South America is perhaps a little fascism, but I think mostly corporatism, and gangsterism, drug-running, black market profits big time and all tax exempt, money laundering, and maybe some other elements or facets.
As for, “The CIA & Military are known to be involved in the trafficing of cocaine, not …”, which Demerara posted, I relatively recently came across a very interesting and, imo, convincing video on an instance of this sort of “business” activity.
“CIA Torture Jet crashed with 4 Tons of COCAINE”,
posted by danostamper714, Dec 11 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE
QUOTE:
About This Video
A Gulfstream II jet that crash landed in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in late September bearing a load of nearly four tons of cocaine. This particular Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA), was used between 2003 and 2005 by the CIA for at least three trips between the U.S. east coast and Guantanamo Bay — home to the infamous “terrorist” prison camp — according to a number of press reports
END QUOTE
That is NOT about fascism. Try gangsterism and drug-trafficking, and big money. The video does not present all of the details that would be ideally provided, but it’s still very convincing, and, to say the very least, very interesting. I would not be surprised AT ALL if what the video says is [fully] true.
Narconews.com is a very fine, or better, website on this sort of covert U.S. ops in South America.
Lastly, excellent article by Kintto Lucas for IPS!
” cheencheen March 24th, 2008 1:03 pm
Few articles mention the AUC, the right-wing paramilitary group in Colombia that has murdered far more people than the FARC, and is also far more heavily involved in the cocaine trade to the United States. …”
SURELY SO!
Someone further above criticised the FARC because they’ve committed some crimes against human rights, and it’s true, but it’s also “nothing” compared to the U.S. govt and all of its not only covert, but also overt crimes, and those of the Colombian govt. Overall, I believe to have gathered that the FARC does merit considerable respect and appreciation; it just needs to “clean up its act” in terms of its wrongs. The U.S. and Colombian govts merit absolutely NO respect, except for the relatively few honourable members serving in these govts. Those people are individually merit-worthy; these govts have absolutely no merit.
With respect to the AUC and more hellish crap down there, I just did a short Web search to check for some links to Narconews, and following are two.
“Congressman William Delahunt to Investigate U.S. Corporations’ Support for Colombian Paramilitaries
By Dan Feder,
Posted on Sat Jan 19th, 2008 at 08:35:38 PM EST”
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2008/1/19/203538/370
QUOTE:
The U.S. commercial media have been fixated on the telenovela of hostage negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the recent visit to Colombia of three U.S. congressmen has been reported only in terms of how it relates to that issue. Unreported in any U.S.-language media was the meeting between Rep. Delahunt (Democrat of Massachusetts) and a number of jailed former leaders of the recently-demobilized narco-paramilitary army, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Bellow, we publish a translation of the story from the January 16 edition of the Colombian paper El Tiempo.
Delahunt says he has received new information on the extent to which U.S. corporations supported the AUC, which existed with relative impunity throughout Colombia, inflicting a government-protected, drug-funded reign of terror from roughly 1997 to 2004. …
END QUOTE.
“Leaked Memo: Corrupt DEA Agents in Colombia Help Narcos and Paramilitaries
Internal Justice Dept. Document Alleges Drug Trafficking Links, Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Murder
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
January 9, 2006″
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1543.html
QUOTE:
The drug war is supposed to follow a very clear script: According to the official screenwriters, the U.S. justice system is pitted against corrupt players in foreign countries who are trying to flood American streets with illicit drugs. The narco-traffickers, crooked cops, and thieving politicians in the drug war are always over there, in Latin America, and elsewhere, and U.S. law enforcers and government officials are always the good guys battling these forces of evil.
But what happens when evidence surfaces that turns that script on its ear? What happens if proof emerges that it is the U.S. justice system that is corrupt? A document obtained recently by Narco News makes those questions more than hypothetical queries. In this document, Department of Justice attorney Thomas M. Kent claims that federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Bogotá, Colombia, are the corrupt players in the war on drugs. (The DEA is part of the larger Justice Department.)
END QUOTE.
People wanting much more on these types of topics in South America, Narconews and its Narcosphere sister site struck me as quite excellent sources. I read a fair number of articles there a few years ago or more, actually more, but the Iraq War and then other top-issue topics covering U.S. imperialism worldwide retained my attention. When wanting information on South America, however, then I’ll use the index at www.globalresearch.ca and definitely Narconews.
(Of course there are surely other good websites for related articles, like ZMag, among others, including some in South America; maybe VenezuelaAnalysis.com)
Just did a quick Web search to see if a link would turn up for an article at VA and one did; maybe more, but I’ll just link this one.
“Chavez Denounces Colombian Paramilitary Activity in Venezuela
February 12th 2008, by James Suggett”
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3146
QUOTE:
…
Paramilitaries impact the barrios of Caracas, as well, where they work mainly in civilian clothes and without heavy weaponry to co-opt local power dynamics, Chávez explained. This tactic is markedly different than that planned by 130 paramilitary fighters who were detained in May 2004 on a farm owned by opposition leader Roberto Alonso outside of Caracas, where they had been preparing a full-scale coup d’état against President Chávez, detainee testimonies revealed.
A principal source of paramilitary income is their control of 100% of Colombian heroine exports and 70% of Colombian cocaine exports, Azzellini claimed. In Colombia, giant drug cartels manage large quantities of the drugs, but in Venezuela paramilitaries deal smaller amounts in local communities to …. …
Azzellini explained that the groups now in Venezuela are descendents of the United Self-defense of Colombia (AUC), a brutal paramilitary force formed in the 1980s by Colombian elites to assume the dirty work of the government, which was seeking to improve its dismal international human rights reputation. While the AUC tactic of “total terror” has been used in Colombian cities such as Medellín, paramilitaries now in Venezuela leverage local economic and political power more than sheer violence, according to Azzellini.
END QUOTE.
That should be an adequate sampling for a post like this, I think. And I … love resources like these. We need many more.
Although the US and the USSR were officially allies in WW2, the US resolved to let Germany and the USSR kill each other as much as possible.
The US entered the war in Dec, 1941, and promised to open a second front in Europe. Which it did. In June 1944.
Dresden was bombed because it was obvious that the Red Army was going to get there first.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed even though it was known that the Japanese were willing to surrender as long as the Emperor was allowed to retain his position. The atomic bomb was to frighten the USSR with the US’s power and willingness to kill without mercy. Not only did the US not drop the first one in an unoccupied place, it dropped a second one, just to show it could.
BULSHIT! The US and Britain conducted a wide scale, merciless massive campaign of civilian population extermination directed at several German cities. Dresden was only one of them. The terms used by the US and Britain were “Terror Bombing”, “Operation Gomorrah”, “Terror from the Sky”, etc. They were intended to brake the will of the German people.
Frederic Taylor’s book on Dresden is, BTW, a filthy lie. He used the number for positively identified dead as the number of confirmed dead. That would be like going into a firebombed city and only counting the bodies of people who had surviving family or friends to identify the ones who were not disfigured beyond recognition.
The Germans had three number. Positively identified, partially identified, confirmed dead. Taylor used the first.
The more I learn about what really happened to the Germans during the Second World War the more I realize that orthodox history is nothing more nor less than a Big Lie. Even the events which initiated the war are far from clear. The inherited wisdom of what happened in the so-called Sender Gleiwitz incident is based on indirect hearsay which amounted to simply a confirmation of the version proffered by the conquering armies. “Vae Victis”