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

                                                   

 

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.

 

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.

 

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]