One book that I’ve been meaning to read for a while but hadn’t gotten around to is Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo. I’m about halfway through it, and it’s a good read. I may or may not review the entire book, but the context of the time is important, especially when juxtaposed with current events with FARC, Hugo Chavez, the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, etc.
I’ve probably said it before, but Mark Bowden’s writing really reaches me. He does grab interesting stories, so that helps, and he’s thorough with the topics.
Killing Pablo is about the hunt for Pablo Escobar, tagged “the world’s greatest outlaw”. Escobar was a leader in the Medellin cocaine cartel, maybe the most powerful man in Colombia from the early 1980’s to early 1990’s. When you read the book, it paints a picture of a Colombia run pretty much by the drug lords. Those who seek to in any way damage their trade often wind up brutally murdered, anyone from journalists, police, judges, and even a popular presidential candidate. Those who work for him are handsomely rewarded, and their families don’t get murdered (well, till the war with the other cartels). But then, like the classically omnidestructive bully, once you know too much about his operations and become a liability, then you’re at risk of dying because of that, too.
Our country spent countless billions of dollars helping the Colombians to break the deathgrip on their nation that the drug-lords had, and since then, the drugs have been run by splintered groups like the narco-terrorist leftist FARC (more on that later).
Reading the book, you can’t help but consider our own republic and its fragility. Not to say that there’s not organized crime, but generally speaking things have remained fairly orderly despite corruption, graft, and violence. I wondered while reading “could this happen here?,” and answered myself that it does, though not to the extent of 1980’s Colombia.
This is why it’s vitally important that we not overlook corruption, or write it off by saying it’s inevitable. On a national scale, we’ve got problems, and part of the problem is that those in charge of writing laws that’d prevent bribery as it occurs now are seemingly unable to stop corruption because they’re so steeped in it. Most of them operate within the law, however the law is just the law, let’s remember that the law doesn’t set the definition of ethically or morally correct behavior.
Such is one problem with having too many lawyers about, is that many set the definition for right and wrong with “state, local, and federal regulations” rather than that little voice inside each of us that says in plain English “somethin’ ain’t right here”. How often have you heard “well, no laws were broken” as an excuse for morally corrupt behavior? Isn’t that legalism trickling into our cultural norms?
There are some things that just aren’t right, and calling them out, even if it gets you labeled as some kind of wacky moralist, is worth doing, in the name of preservation of our own republic. If enough of us stand strong, we will.
When you look closely at the “progressive” appeasers who believe that diplomacy without force is the only answer, a good example that Killing Pablo’s author Mark Bowden recently cited in his “The Point” column in the Philadelphia Inquirer (link) is the kidnapped politician Ingrid Betancourt (link), who reached out to FARC hoping for peace and wound up kidnapped over six years ago. The column gives a good description of FARC’s apparent implosion- from Mark Bowden’s “Erosion of Colombia’s Glorified Gang”:
The FARC still bills itself as a peasant army, but it has no coherent ideological rationale for its crimes. It is a glorified gang, financed with drug-trafficking and extortion, whose only fans are those wedded to the idea of revolution for its own sake, or those like Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has his own purposes. The good news for those who believe in democracy and who root for stability and prosperity in Colombia is that the gang may at last be falling apart.
Bombing campaigns and extortion turned the Colombian people against FARC years ago. Weary of endless war, of depredations committed by both pro- and antigovernment forces, then-President Andrés Pastrana tried to ease the rebels into political legitimacy in 1998 by ceding large portions of his country to the gang in a failed effort to spur negotiations. He lost his popularity and presidency in the process. Asked once to explain what these stubborn guerrillas wanted, even the notably empathetic Pastrana was at a loss. He stood up and pointed behind him.
“This chair,” he said.
Pastrana’s failure brought to power Álvaro Uribe, now in his second four-year term, who has maintained strong popularity with an avowed policy of crushing the FARC.
He may finally be succeeding. Reports in recent weeks suggest that members, some of them kidnapped as children from remote villages and pressed into service as fighters, have been deserting in droves. One killed his own high-ranking commander last month and as proof delivered to government forces the FARC leader’s laptop and his severed hand.
A controversial raid by Colombian forces across the border into Ecuador killed Luis Edgar Devia Silva, alias Raúl Reyes, reputed to be the FARC’s number-two man. The raid provoked the ire of Ecuador and Venezuela, but since both neighboring countries have long allowed the gang to camp on their sides of the border, it was hard to summon sustained outrage. The world’s oldest “revolutionary” movement finds itself increasingly isolated and vulnerable.
When you reach out to people whose stated goal is your destruction, what do you hope to achieve? I heard someone recently speak of Neville Chamberlain’s (link) appeasement of Nazi Germany as compared to those who’d appease terrorists today, say something to the extent that at least on Chamberlain’s behalf that he didn’t have the historical model of Neville Chamberlain to work with!
Interpol yesterday authenticated the laptop of the FARC leader “Raul Reyes”, (link) which included ties to Jimmy Carter-approved Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who hopes to upset democracy in Colombia, and along with his Iranian buddy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has a stated goal of seeing the demise of the United States.
BOGOTA, Colombia - The onus is now on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to explain evidence of his apparently intimate ties to Colombia’s main guerrilla army.
Interpol on Thursday endorsed the authenticity of computer files seized in a rebel camp, announcing that Colombia did not tamper with documents indicating Chavez sought to finance and arm the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Venezuelan officials set up contacts with Australian arms dealers and arranged for missile training in the Middle East, according to the documents, which were on computer hard drives seized by Colombia and obtained by the Washington Post.
The FARC leadership was given a lot of hope by the possibility of a Barack Obama presidency as well (link), adding another terror organization to the list of those chanting Si, Se Puede! for Mr. Obama. Back to Bowden, who nails it:
We tend to think of the war on terror in this country as a campaign against Islamofascists, but terrorism is a tactic, not a movement. It is the last refuge of fringe causes with little hope of success in a free society. No country knows better than Colombia how devastating that tactic can be. It fought a bloody war with narco-terrorists throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and then saw that struggle morph into grinding civil war.
A cornered FARC is a danger not only to Colombia, but also to all of Latin America and possibly even points north. The governments of Panama and Peru have recently pledged to help combat the gang. Brazil, Argentina and Chile have joined with European nations, the United States, and Canada in labeling it a terror organization.
So what do you do when you’ve got them with their backs against the wall? Do you give them the reprieve they seek? Or do you smash them?
Another factor that we arrive at is how the secular pseudo-socialist governments can be omni-forgiving to those who don’t seek it, continually offer amnesty without apology or commitment to change, as if a unilateral charm offensive will disarm those who seek to destroy you. The arrogance of those who believe that acts of government can bring peace where the ground’s not tilled for it dooms them to repeat the history of Neville Chamberlain, and not just in the Middle East.
What does it say to those like Alvaro Uribe, who’ve risked not only being associated with the not-always-popular Norteamericanos, but their safety and that of their family, to play along with our foreign policy desire to reduce the supply of cocaine (for whatever that’s worth), and then not only remove the carrot (Colombian free trade) that’s been promised them, but leave them with a stick that’s their unfriendly neighbor seeking to overturn their government.
Then, to take it a step further, we give their unfriendly neighbor a promise of change, favorable to them, but not requiring a commitment from them for mutually beneficial arrangements. We give ourselves away to nations and organizations who seek our destruction, and reward our friends with a politically correct/expedient shaft.
Ultimately, this is the promise of Marxism. To each according to his needs (as perceived by the politicians), from each according to his means. Our friends will receive the same treatment as our enemies, and we can expect them to reciporocate by treating us as our enemies treat us. It’s the dark, godless inversion of the Golden Rule, corroding the merit of character, enterprise, and individual quality into obscure nothingness.
Just as our nation left those who fought with honor beside us in Southeast Asia to rot, the same style of governance threaten to bring similar results to Afghanistan (again?), Iraq, Latin America, freedom-seeking Persians, and threatened allies around the world. What value is added to our lives by doing so? For those who seek to “turn the page” on Pax Americana, there’s no better way to do so.
