Re: A "second Vietnam" in Colombia?

["Jesse Crane-Seeber" <craneseeberj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I enjoyed this post, and the analysis in it is generally right-on, but a few
things should be said in order to make it an accurate description of the
situation in Colombia.  As a Marxist, I consider it my duty to own up to the
crimes perpetrated by so called "Marxists" and i think the FARC is let off a
little light in the previous posting.

First of all, it is clear that both the government and the revolutionaries
benefit from the enormous amount of cash entering the nation through the
drug trade.  While I am certainly not a War-On-Drugs type, I think its
important to acknowledge that the FARC and ELN control much of the drug
producing regions of Columbia, and have done nothing to stop the flow of
money/cocaine.  Not that they necessarily should, it provides a source of
income to support the war effort, but i think any analysis that glosses over
this is open to attack from the right.

Secondly, having worked at a Human Rights organization in London last year,
I've seen the Columbia file.  The vast majority of killings and
disappearances have been (rightly) blamed on the death squads, operating
with the support and consent of military.  But this does NOT excuse the many
killed by guerillas for crimes of various sorts.  There is no due-process in
the rebel controlled zones (although it's obviously difficult to set up a
justice system in the midst of poverty and war), and people are regularly
executed by FARC and ELN for crimes which they may or may not have
committed, we can't ever know because witnesses are hardly plentiful when it
comes to disagreeing with armed men...

The reason these corrections are important is because so much of what was
said is so valuable.  The War on Drugs is clearly an attempt to dissolve the
movement for liberation in Columbia while simultaneously profiting from the
enormous number of African-Americans and other oppressed peoples who are
daily taken from their communities and put into rural areas as an enormous
job-creation scheme for white, conservative, rural communities...

Rev. Jesse
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