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<A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:549176">History Teaches Us</A>
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Subject: History Teaches Us
From: Ralph McGehee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 31 August 1999 01:25 PM EDT
Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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HISTORY TEACHES US?
Beginning shortly after World War Two, the United States supported
an imported regime in Vietnam that ultimately led to the trauma of
the Vietnam War. As a consequences of this war, the narcotics traffic
in Vietnam and surrounding countries -- the Golden Triangle -- grew
enormously -- accounting for majority of percentages of heroin and
opium entering the United States. The war itself grew to such bitter
proportions that it threatened the existence of our own form of
government.
Beginning in the late eighties we began supporting the Afghanistan
Mujehedin, to fight what was estimated to be a massive Soviet push --
(our bad intelligence did not recognize the soon death of the USSR).
Along with this CIA-supported Mujehedin, we created generations of
new terrorists. Sadly our do-goodism created the Golden Crescent --
a new melange of countries exporting the majority percentages of
heroin and opium entering the United States.
Now we are told that we must fight the new drug threat by
supporting a narco-terrorist counterinsurgency in Colombia.
>From that traffic, they tell us, 70 to 80 percent of the narcotics
entering the U.S., emanates. Can this new war generate massive new
percentages of drugs -- 170% to 180% -- flooding our shores?
I fear that the new war on drugs will create agonies for the
United States. What will be the impact of this narco-war on the
streets of Los Angeles? I predict that this new war on drugs
will enflame the entire region. Would it not be wise now, before the
new war gets out of hand, to reconsider our policies. What does
history teach us?
Ralph McGehee
http://come.to/CIABASE
-------------------------------------
The U.S. is to step up military and economic aid to Colombia
[to fight] the drug-financed Marxist guerrillas there. U.S. officials
warned President Andres Pastrana that he risks losing U.S. support if
he makes further concessions to the insurgents to restart stalled
peace negotiations. But White House drug policy director McCaffrey
and State's Thomas Pickering, also told Pastrana the U.S. will
increase aid if he develops a comprehensive plan to strengthen
the military, halt the nation's economic free fall and fight drug
trafficking. Security assistance already stands at $289 million this
year. The U.S. [has already] resumed helping the army and expanded
intelligence sharing and is training a 950-man Colombian army
counternarcotics battalion. The U.S. is planning to fund at least
two more such battalions. Colombia produces 80 percent of the world's
cocaine and about 70 percent of the heroin sent to the U.S. Two Marxist
guerrilla groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
with about 15,000 combatants, and the National Liberation Army (ELN),
with about 5,000 -- control about 40 percent of territory and receive
hundreds of millions of dollars from protecting drug trafficking routes,
airstrips and laboratories. 7,000 right-wing paramilitary troops, who also
derive millions of dollars from cocaine trafficking, control about 15 percent
of the territory. In a world with a lot of bad policy options toward
Colombia,
we are taking the worst one, said Winifred Tate of the Washington Office
on Latin America. "By strengthening the military you are strengthening an
abusive, corrupt institution that has resisted civil control and human rights
reforms..." while U.S. aid should be focused on fighting drugs,
the line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency has blurred so
much that it is almost meaningless. The immediate increase in military aid
will focus on upgrading a sophisticated intelligence and listening post
in Tres Esquinas, and U.S. training of new, special units in the Colombian
army. Washington Post 8/29/99 A1.
--------------------------------
>From an earlier post.
In Colombia, one major consideration is how the increase
in United States military involvement in Colombia reflects
the Vietnam War. The population numbers of the two countries
are similar, and the existence of revolutionary movements
somewhat similar. How heavily have these movements organized
that population? In Vietnam the Communists organized millions
of South Vietnamese who committed themselves totally to
their victory -- while our intelligence blinded itself and
counted only a fraction. Are we doing this again in Colombia?
Another major issue is the Colombian military which is corrupt,
supports drug traffickers and sponsors death squads. Can such
an organization demand the loyalty of the people and the
unquestioning support of the United States? Does this not
mirror Vietnam realities?
The White house has a plan for a new global strategy for the
next century -- that calls for U.S. military intervention in trouble
spots and says the U.S. is facing it biggest espionage threat in
history. The attacks could be nuclear, biological or chemical weapons,
bombs or cyber attacks on our systems. The strategy statement
represents a road map for how 21st century policy-makers...should
influence events abroad -- a road map for how 21st-century policymakers
should use America's strength to influence developments overseas and
at home. It foresees an active military. "We must be prepared to use
all appropriate...national power to influence the actions of other
states...to exert global leadership..." Washington Times 8/24/99 A1.
-------------------------------------------------
What the Other Side Says -- Colombian Guerillas Explain Their Aims
LUIS AUGUSTO GARCIA GUERERO of the Camilista Union -- National Liberation
Army (UCELN) explains some of the background to Colombia today and the
origins of the guerilla struggle.
The three guerilla organizations originated in the social, student, peasant
and workers movements of the 1960s and were influenced by the Cuban and
Vietnamese revolutions. The decision to undertake armed struggle arose when
state terror and the violence of the oligarchy closed off all other
alternatives for social change.
On July 4, 1964, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which identified with
the Cuban Revolution, was formed in the department of Santander, an
oil-rich area controlled by United States multinationals with a militant
workers tradition. The guerilla priest Father Camilo Torres Restrepo was an
early member of the ELN.
A month earlier the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), linked
to the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC), was formed from organisations
established by peasants in the Pato and Guayabero regions to protect
themselves against the attacks of rich landlords. In 1968, as a result of
an earlier split in the PCC and the creation of the PCC (Marxist Leninist),
the People's Liberation Army (EPL) was formed in Llanos del Tigre, a zone
with a strong tradition of peasant struggle.
Each group separately engaged in revolutionary struggle until 1987. In 1984
social upheaval led to the formation of the United Workers Centre, the
development of peasant unity and the coordination of civic movements. Large
mobilizations and strikes resulted from this unity and its influence led
the armed organisations to unite in the Simon Bolivar Guerilla Coordinating
Committee (CGSB).
The small regional guerilla nuclei of three decades ago have won sufficient
support from the Colombian people to consolidate themselves into an
alliance that has a political and military presence in 700 of Colombia's
1050 municipalities. More than 10,000 combatants are organised in 120
fronts and guerilla columns. (Colombia's population is 33 million.)
This increasing strategic capacity has been based on the guerilla forces
winning popular support. The minister for agriculture, Cecilia López
Montano, admitted in January, "The insurgency is winning the war in the
impoverished countryside, where misery, the product of social injustice, is
the impetus of subversion."
The guerilla movement offers an alternative model of power, a people's
power which fights tyranny and oppression. We encourage the exercise of
true national democracy in accordance with the people's social and cultural
identity and encourage communities to analyse, understand and propose
self-sustaining solutions to their problems.
This is often the first time that such communities have had the chance to
start to take control of their own lives and begin a process of social
transformation. This process is the lifeblood of the revolution.
The CGSB's alternative economic strategy aims to "humanize" the country.
Our program, "New Colombia", is based on democracy, sovereignty, welfare
and life for the majority, the impoverished, marginalised and exploited
communities. These people will form the basis of national liberation and
the construction of a Latin American socialism in harmony with nature and
rooted in our regional and cultural diversity.
Our revolutionary ethic is based on honesty, openness and permanent
struggle against a regime based on exploitation, environmental destruction
and drug trafficking.
The Colombian ruling class will not allow social change to occur
peacefully. The only democracy and legal guarantees that exist are purely
for the traditional parties of the oligarchy to contest elections.
Whenever opposition parties or movements have won support, questioned
economic and social structures and proposed alternatives, they have been
totally annihilated. Organized workers, peasants, indigenous peoples and
community activists have met with the same fate.
To impose its policies of privatisation and neo-liberalism the regime has
also murdered those it considers "disposable": street children, beggars and
prostitutes. Millions of peasants have been displaced by military and
paramilitary activities.
According to the National Union School, at least 614 unionists have been
murdered in the last five years. (It is said that it is easier to organize
a guerilla column than a labour union.)
Several presidential candidates have been assassinated in recent years.
Last year the church-based Intercongregational Commission for Justice and
Peace alleged that the military and paramilitary forces assassinate five
people a day.
Democracy has been further restricted by the spread of corruption and the
infiltration of political and military institutions by the drug cartels.
Big international capital, national industrial monopolies, large
land-holders and drug traffickers have been allies in the development of
counter-insurgency strategy.
This death and terror machine is coordinated by the US government and
implemented by the military high command. US military advisers are present
in 15 bases. The US also trains military cadre and provides military aid
under the guise of assistance in the war against drugs.
The workers barely surviving on low salaries, the unemployed and
underemployed live in "misery belts" surrounding the cities. The peasants,
indigenous people and blacks who have been forced off their land by oil,
coal, gold and lumber companies now live in these areas. At the bottom of
the social pyramid are the 55,000 children who die of hunger and curable
disease each year, while at the top the governing minority and
multinationals pillage and export the nation's wealth and resources.
The guerilla movement has opened up political and social processes for the
great majority, the politically and economically excluded. Our proposal for
peace with social justice and dignity will ensure radical transformations
in social relations and government and the open, rather then hidden,
exercise of power. Green Left Weekly (Date not recorded.)
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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