![](http://worldmeets.us/images/obama.yes.we.cannabis.gif)
Would a Latin American war be prevented
with drug legalization by
the United States?
El Tiempo, Colombia
Will Obama End 'War on Drugs' … for South America's Sake?
"We
need Obama to step up and eliminate the drug traffickers who poison everything
and cause the deaths of so many heroes … It would be enough for him to lift the
ban on drugs and the impasse amongst the neighbors would come to a happy end. …
Wasn't it after the famous Wickersham Commission
that President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted Prohibition?"
By Bernardo García Guerrero
![](http://www.eltiempo.com/opinion/columnistas/otroscolumnistas/IMAGEN/IMAGEN-5759489-1.jpg)
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
August 3, 2009
Colombia - El Tiempo - Original Article
(Spanish)
It's possible that Manuel Marulanda [a
now-dead leader of the FARC] has more in common with [Ecuador President] Correa
and [Venezuela President] Chávez than with [Colombia President] Uribe. It's
possible that Uribe feels like he has more in common with George W. Bush and [former
Peru President] Alejandro Toledo than with Correa and Chávez. But it's also
possible that Chávez and Correa, active leaders of the powerful OPEC oil cartel,
harbored fear and antipathy toward Bush, the ex-president and oil warrior of Iraq, who the
Colombian government whole-heartedly accompanied on that adventure.
![](http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:D178GAyEJFTalM:http://carlosmora.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/tiro-fijo.jpg)
![](http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:U1js0GvlKVT8OM:http://www.ecuadorexplorer.com/assets/images/rafael_correa.jpg)
![](http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:DsuklufIxEuI3M:http://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/filmi_sangeet/media/2002_chavez4.jpg)
![](http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:GcLqorzslz_ZsM:http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/Alvaro%2520Uribe.jpg)
![](http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:VQ4QzsCRH6Wb9M:http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2250194/george-w-bush-main_Full.jpg)
A
rich tableau - Clockwise from top left: Dead
FARC chief Manuel Marulanda; Ecuador President
Rafael
Correa; Venezuela
President
Hugo Chavez;
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe; former U.S.
President George W.
Bush;
and former Peru
President Alejandro Toledo.
And it's possible that Correa
prefers to "tolerate" the status quo rather than "trigger"
a war on the border area that reaches Ibarra and extends 370
miles from the Pacific to middle of the Putumayo River, where
there are thousands and thousands of Colombian asylum seekers: the displaced; the
drug traffickers of course, and undoubtedly, some FARC militants. It's also
possible that FARC guerrilla Iván Márquez and
his comrades walk along the Venezuela border that stretches 1200 miles from the
Caribbean coast to the sources of Orinoco and Rio Negro rivers.
![](http://media.economist.com/images/ga/2009w10/Colombia.gif)
Map
showing where former FARC leader Manuel
Marulanda
was killed by Colombian forces last year.
With
America moving out of the a Manta Air base
in Ecuador - and into new bases in Colombia, many
Latin Americans fear the consequences.
It's a complicated tableau. If
America's highly-trained military and top-notch equipment is stationed on five
Colombian air bases, it's possible that Chávez will feel rightly threatened, and
Correa, uncomfortable or snubbed. If some "Made in Sweden" bazookas are
intercepted, sold 20 years ago to Venezuela, things will boil over. If traces
of correspondence from Iván Márquez are discovered indicating that two
Venezuelan generals have offered him spare firing tubes and ammunition to put
in them, the whole thing will explode.
And there's no way to back out now. Because the continuation of Plan
Colombia takes account of the abandonment of the Manta Air Base [in Ecuador] and
can be played against the promise of the [Colombia] Free Trade Agreement with the United
States. This is possible and as
some see it - without looking at it from a negative point of view. The
Salomonic wisdom of Óscar
Arias [picture, left], President of Costa Rica and winner of Nobel Peace Prize,
could best be summarized in one-sentence: "Military control of the borders
on the part of Venezuela and Ecuador in exchange for the termination of U.S.
aerial missions in Colombia." A Salomonic
judgment, but hard to achieve.
Because what the
Colombian government would like is for its two neighbors to become allies in
battling the FARC and confronting the drug traffickers. But the two neighbors
know very well that this would mean swallowing the dirty little war with which
they have check-mated Colombia. Then Uribe would step up the war with more
sophisticated aerial attacks. The game would escalate. Should we pick up the pieces
across the border? That would mean breaking off relations. Should we keep the
bases? Expect retaliation.
In the tragedies of Greek theater,
when the plot became entangled in a Gordian knot and the young hero was about
to die unjustly, the playwright had recourse to lowering a god onto the stage -
Hermes, the crafty protector of traders, or Aphrodite, the goddess of love -
who, behind the curtain, saved the hero or eliminated the villain. The feint
was improbable but the public applauded the timely deed. Since then "Deus ex machina"
has signified the miraculous intervention from behind the stage machinery.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
We need Obama to step up and
eliminate the drug traffickers who poison everything and cause the deaths of so
many heroes - not only presidential candidates who are felled by bullets, but
those who have to sacrifice their mandates, entangled in dirty wars. It would
be enough for Obama to lift the ban on drugs and the impasse amongst the
neighbors would come to a happy end. Wasn't it after the famous Wickersham Commission
that President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted Prohibition? It wasn't done for
reasons of health nor addiction, but because American society had fallen into
unstoppable chaos, with the police corrupt and the organized crime imposing its
own law with impunity.
Quite a Greek tragedy. Just
like the one we're living through now.
CLICK HERE FOR SPANISH VERSION
[Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US August 8, 6:49pm]