Americans are so busy keeping up with events in the Middle East that we do not realize how much things have been changing in our own "neighborhood." That would be a grave mistake on our part because - in the long run - the Caribbean and South and Central America are as important to our national interest and even to our winning the War on Terrorism. A Latin America led by Cuba's Castro and Venezuela's Chavez and Brazil's Lula appears ready to plunge that continent back into the mayhem and socialism that made life there so miserable. Given that the three leaders have ties to terrorists or their national sponsors, terrorist groups well could find willing accomplices - the heads of national governments - in our own backyard.
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Americans need to become aware that we face a significant threat to our security in our own backyard. Leaders such as Chavez, Castro and Lula have no real concern for human rights but they mean our country ill will. A Lula may be more polished now, presenting himself as a reformer, not a revolutionary. We should not be fooled nor should our nation's policymakers be gulled into complacency about Latin America because we are so concerned about the Middle East. The world's troubles are not just taking place in a distant part of the globe, it's happening in our own backyard, too. It's about time we wake up to that fact.
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'One darned thing after another': That's how former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once defined foreign policy. The latest "darned thing" for the United States is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
For no apparent reason, the leftist strongman is arming Venezuela to the teeth. He's also supporting local narcoterrorists and other Latin revolutionaries.
Chavez idolizes Cuba's Fidel Castro, is chummy with Libya's Moammar Khadafy and was a Saddam Hussein pal. He's made nasty remarks about President Bush and "suggestive" public comments about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
According to Gerver Torres, a former Venezuelan government minister, Chavez's "main motivation now is to do everything he possibly can to negatively affect the United States, Bush in particular . . . trying to bring together all the enemies of the United States."
It's tempting to write off Chavez simply as Latin America's latest tin-pot dictator, but that would be a mistake. Venezuela's own "Fidelito" has the potential to cause real trouble for the United States - right in our own backyard.
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Many Americans will find it hard to take Chavez seriously, but his capacity for regional troublemaking shouldn't be discounted, especially as oil prices rocket.
Fortunately, the Bush administration recognizes this and is beginning to craft a new policy to deal with Chavez. The best approach will include working with other regional leaders to contain and isolate him, while not inflaming the dictator's popular support at home.
Chavez recently announced his intent to export his "Bolivarian revolution" (read: Cuban revolution). Considering his disastrous socialist economic and repressive political record at home, we'd better stop him before he gets started.
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POSTURE STATEMENT
"If we in the US government are honest with ourselves, we can look at the region today and see that we are not tending the fields with the same zeal we showed in planting the seeds of democracy. Too many of the democracies in our AOR are lacking some or all of the vital democratic institutions: a functional legislative body, an independent judiciary, a free press, a transparent electoral process that guarantees the rights of the people, security forces which are subordinate to civil authority and economic opportunity for the people.
Because a secure environment is a non-negotiable foundation for a functioning civil society, Southern Command is committed to building capabilities of the security forces of our region. The seeds of social and economic progress will only grow and flourish in the fertile soil of security.
We cannot afford to let Latin America and the Caribbean become a backwater of violent, inward-looking states that are cut off from the world around them by populist, authoritarian governments. We must reward and help those governments that are making difficult, disciplined choices that result in the long-term wellbeing of their people. The challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean today are significant to our national security. We ignore them at our peril."
GENERAL BANTZ J. CRADDOCK, UNITED STATES ARMY
COMMANDER, UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND
BEFORE THE 109TH CONGRESS
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
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Colombia's FARC spreads in Central America
Marxist guerrillas in Colombia have established cells in Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama in what U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement authorities say is an effort by the rebel organization to expand its arms- and drug-trafficking operations.
Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez confirmed the presence of members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the three Central American countries last week, saying the organization was seeking to "infiltrate Central America to buy more weapons and destabilize the rule of law ...."
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According to General Hill, the "narcoterrorists in Colombia remain the largest and most well known threat in our region." However, Hill fails to support this claim that narcoterrorists pose such a direct security threat to the U.S.
In fact, the term narcoterrorist, while full of threatening implications, is rarely clearly defined by the U.S. government and its military agencies.
At his confirmation hearing, Lieutenant General Craddock did attempt to define the highly dubious concept: "the terms insurgents or guerrillas are less applicable today than in the past. I believe the term narcoterrorists is more appropriate, given the fact that the center of gravity for these groups is the incredible financial support they get from illicit drug trafficking."
The lack of clarity in Craddock's explanation inadvertently reveals how SouthCom arbitrarily reclassified the country's leftist armed political opposition, denominated as guerrillas during the Cold War and drug traffickers in the 1990s, as a blanket terrorist threat.
In an attempt to link the situation in Colombia to Washington's global mission, Craddock explained, "supporting the government of Colombia's efforts to defeat illicit narco-trafficking also directly supports the global War on Terror."
This assertion is a convenient attempt to validate this new allusion without any supporting evidence. The government's arbitrary use of inflamatory language and its efforts to rationalize Washington's allocation of $1.5 billion for Plan Colombia have failed to overcome its disappointing achievements in the War on Terror as Colombia had played no part in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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US State Department Releases Critical Report
on Venezuela's Human Rights
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Kozak released the State Department's report Supporting Democracy and Human Rights: The US Record 2004-2005, yesterday. The report contains strong criticisms of Venezuela's human rights record and U.S. strategies towards Venezuela. While presenting the report Kozak said that Venezuela was "backsliding" with regard to human rights. Responding to the report, Venezuela's Vice-President Josr Vicente Rangel, argued that the report was "obsessive and without foundation."
The State Department report details the US government's strategy in "supporting democratic movements in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
According to the report, Venezuela's human rights record continues to be poor. In 2004-2005 "freedom-loving" Venezuelan citizens were forced to confront the "government's increasingly authoritarian rule." "Over the past six years," the report says, "Chavez increasingly has consolidated power within the executive branch, extending its control over the country's other branches of government." Recent laws passed by the National Assembly-in which pro-Chavez legislators have a slim majority-reforming the Supreme Court, legislating social responsibility in the public and private Media, and reforming of the country's Penal Code were responsible for what the report identifies as a general deterioration in human rights in 2004. Allegations of police and military executions and torture-no examples are given-are also cited as justification for US involvement in the country.
The report makes no reference to documents recently obtained by www.venezuelafoia.info, a website dedicated to monitoring US intervention in Venezuela, that reveal that the CIA had advance notice of the 2002 April coup that briefly removed President Chavez from power. Though the CIA distributed a report on the expected coup to 200 high-level US officials, they made no effort to warn the Venezuelan government. In its only reference to the coup, the report perhaps over-cautiously refers to it as a "brief interruption of the constitutional order."
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La evidencia esta en los Documentos:
La CIA estuvo involucrada en el golpe de estado contra el presidente Chavez.
El reciente asesinato del fiscal venezolano Danilo Anderson, cuya ejecucion recuerda mucho los metodos de la CIA, podria estar preparando el terreno para futuros asesinatos politicos. La historia nos muestra que cuando la CIA fracasa en sus intentos no letales de derrocar un regimen, toma medidas mas desesperadas. A pesar de que el gobierno venezolano y sus partidarios han podido vencer a la CIA varias veces durante los ultimos anos, debe ser prioritario aumentar el nivel de vigilancia, seguridad e inteligencia.
