> No, Escobar's violence didn't kill him. Four poorly timed but
> otherwise inconsequential murders did. Escobar lacked the political
> vision to see this for the issue it was. He even wondered aloud
> about why the authorities were so worked up over those last four
> murders given all that had gone before, insisting that it was "just
> business" inside the Cartel. And no, in the end WOMD would not have
> helped him.
Those four murders certainly accelerated his downfall, but I still
stand by my view that downing the Avianca flight we his fatal
mistake. Ultimately, what destroyed him was the erosion of his base
of support, his organization. This erosion was mostly accomplished by
a group calling itself "Los Pepes", which was led by the Search Block
(under Colonel Martinez) and the families of those four who were
murdered. Certainly those murders brought Los Pepes into existence,
and certainly los Pepes cut off Escobar's logistical support by
killing off lots of people in his organization. But how did they know
who to kill? Actually, their big source was all the US intel, from
Centra Spike, the CIA, etc, etc. Without that steady stream of intel,
Los Pepes would have been much less effective.
Also, Los Pepes wouldn't have existed without the US being there to
provide a lot of political pressure on the Colombian military to
finally kill Escobar.
So the whole situation wouldn't have started without US intel and US
pressure.
And the catalyst for US involvement was the Avianca flight. Escobar
killed 102 people, including two Americans, and the the witless
suicide bomber (but excluding the intended target), and that gave the
US a reason to get involved.
Escobar had no restraint in using violence. He didn't quite
understand that killing creates enemies, and so it needs to be done
careful to avoid creating too many enemies or too powerful enemies
(such as the US).
His childhood was in the time of La Violencia. He grew up surrounded
by purposeless killing. There was so much killing that murder was
mundane. I guess this influenced him for the rest of his life. He
didn't see the problem with killing a hundred random people on an
airplane just to get one guy.
> Incidently, while Delta was almost certainly at the site of his
> killing and involved in a support role, it was Columbians, right
> down to the radio direction finder, who finally caught and, mostly
> likely, assassinated him. In the end it was only American equipment
> in Columbian hands that caught Escobar. (The CIA direction finding
> effort was the laughing stock of the show. The Army stuff was much
> better but still- in the end- insufficient).
Yeah, this I agree with. He was located by a Colombian radio
direction finder (Hugo Martinez, the son of Col. Martinez in fact) who
finally found him. Hugo saw him through a window blabbering away, and
then called for some reinforcements. There's no real evidence that
Delta itself was in the team that finally killed him, and certainly
there was no shortage of Colombians willing to do the job, so I see no
reason to make theories there. Also, there were a lot of reasons for
Delta to not be involved (the higher-ups knew there would be a lot of
fall-out if a US soldier got killed in this thing). One thing is
certain, though: the Colombians who did it were trained by US forces,
and they had a lot of US intel and equipment to help them out. But
that's still a different level of involvement from having a US soldier
pull the trigger.
And also, yes, the CIA direction finding stuff apparently wasn't
working there. Oh well, starting in October all cellphones will have
GPS built in, which will take all the guesswork out.
I think that after the downfall of the Medellin cartel, the coke lords
learned to be more restrained and discrete. I'm not really up on the
current situation, but I guess even the whole idea of doing things
with big cartels has evolved into less hiererarchical organizations.
