Arthur Shaw: Colombian dictatorship is a puppet that doesn't need strings
VHeadline commentarist Arthur Shaw writes: Even after Eva Golinger's recent disclosure of a document prepared by US Air Force, most of the bourgeois media and reactionary bourgeois regimes persist in spreading lies that this US military build-up in Colombia ... that is, increasing the number of US military bases there from 3 to 10 and expanding their operational capabilities ... aims:
(1) to fight drug trafficking, and
(2) to defend the Colombia dictatorship from alleged "terrorist activity" or for the Colombian dictatorship to attack ... again ... only two of Colombia's closest neighbors which have chosen the socialist path of development.
In reality, the imperialist build-up in Colombia is more ambitious than (1) and (2), although, to be sure, (1) and (2) are two of the aims that the build-up seeks.
Two of the aims of the US imperialist build-up in Colombia are an increase in terrorism in Colombia, Colombia's neighbors, and throughout all of Latin America and the Caribbean and, also, an increase in drug trafficking in Colombia, its neighbors, and the region. The bourgeois media brainwashes broad sectors of the masses to believe that the constant acts of terrorism committed by the brutal Colombian dictatorship are not terrorism but merely something called "paramilitary activity." The bourgeois media insist terrorism in the context of Colombia consists only of armed opposition to paramilitary activity perpetrated by the Colombian dictatorship and its allies. In other words, if you don't approve of "paramilitary activity," then, according to the bourgeois media, you are a either terrorist or a supporter of terrorism.
For example, FARC ... the legitimate representative force in a state of belligerency against the Colombian dictatorship ... fights terrorist "paramilitary activity" committed by the Colombian dictatorship and its death-squad allies. That is, FARC fights to stop such acts as torture, mass murder, and use of concentration camps by the Colombian dictatorship and its paramilitary or terrorist allies. Therefore, most of the bourgeois media and reactionary bourgeois regimes falsely denounce FARC as "terrorist," because, once again, in the perverse ethics of reactionaries, "terrorism" consists of opposition to "paramilitary activity." We can even ignore the death squad allies of the Colombian dictatorship and accurately describe the armed forces of the Colombian dictatorship under Alvaro Uribe and his friends as both military and para-military in their terrorist mission.
Another example of the determination of the bourgeois media and reactionary bourgeois regimes not to recognize terrorist Colombian reactionaries as terrorists is the policy of the Colombian dictatorship to deploy death squads inside Venezuela. These death squads randomly slaughter Venezuelan citizens, similar to the murderous operations of these same death squads in Colombia. Although numerous Venezuelan citizens are wantonly murdered by this reactionary scum from Colombia, almost none of the bourgeois media deign to denounce these Colombian murderers as "terrorists."
A designation as terrorists of Colombian death squads operating in Venezuela with support of the Colombia dictatorship may trigger the imposition of punitive legal measures around world against these death squads and the Colombia dictatorship that backs them. Already, much of the bourgeois media have started to call the new Venezuelan militia units "terrorist groups" because they resist the death squads, both Colombia, Venezuelan, and of mixed composition.
So, one of the aims of the imperialist build-up in Colombia is to promote terrorism which the bourgeois media euphemize as "paramilitary activity" in an attempt to exonerate the armed forces of the Colombian dictatorship on the grounds that some death squads members are not government troops and some government troops are not death squad members.
Now, the views expressed above find strong support in 350-page US Air Force document recently exposed by Eva Golinger, among others. The document deals with fiscal appropriations for over 800 US military bases all over the world, including US bases in Colombia. The passages of the document that most interest us deal with fiscal appropriations for one of the seven new US bases in Colombia
The imperialist document doesn't say that the aims of the US build-up is to fight terrorism and drug trafficking ... that is, except in the most incidental and peripheral way. The imperialist document states flat out and emphatically that the build-up will provide US imperialists with "an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America/"
The reference to "South America" stunned many governments in the region because they swallowed imperialist lies about "terrorism" and drug trafficking.
WHAT DOES "SOUTH AMERICA" MEAN?
We must understand what the imperialist phrase "full spectrum operations throughout South America" means and doesn't mean. Some reactionaries insists the build-up deals principally with domestic problems in Colombia. That's a reactionary lie because "South America," which the imperialist document mentions, isn't the same thing as Colombia. Colombia is only a part of "South America."
Of course, we don't deny in any way or to the least degree that the build-up in Colombia will try to repress the national liberation forces of the bourgeois liberals, petty bourgeois leftists/democrats, and proletarian revolutionaries in Colombia. Our point is that the use of the term "South America" implies that US imperialists have their eye on something wider than these Colombian progressive forces.
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Our point is that the use of the term "South America" implies an imperial intent to repress liberals, leftists, and revolutionaries throughout the continent, not just in Colombia.
The pro-imperialists say we [progressive folk] are paranoid or we are trying distract the attention of people from their local problems because we believe that "South America" means "South America," and not the absurd belief professed by reactionaries that "South America" means only Colombia. We insist that the aim of the build-up is to resist the rise of the working and middle class Left and the rise of the bourgeois liberals wherever, in the region, the Left and liberals ascend or are likely to ascend to power.
Between the two "extreme" views is a middle view. One "extreme" view says the aim of the build-up is principally to step-up repression only or mostly in Colombia and the other "extreme" view says the aim is to repress people "throughout South America," as the imperialist document itself openly declares, The middle view recalls that the Colombian dictatorship declares its "right" to invade only Venezuela or Ecuador under any pretext the Bogota dictatorship chooses, whether the pretext is fighting "terrorism" or fighting drug trafficking or fighting for or against something else.
In March 2008, the Colombian dictatorship invaded Ecuador to show it means business. Thus, the real targets of the build-up, according to the middle view, are Venezuelan and Ecuador. The middle view argues that Venezuela and Ecuador are neither "South America" nor Colombia. Thus, the middle view finds that the imperialist document either inadvertently or deliberately overstates the aims of the build-up when the imperial document mentions "South America" as the target of the build-up. According to the middle view, the imperial document "deliberately overstates" if the mention of "South America" is only puffery intended to manipulate members of the US Congress into appropriating $47 million for construction projects for one the seven new US military bases in Colombia. On the other hand, the imperial document "inadvertently overstates" if the authors of the document really believes that US imperialists and their Colombian quislings harbor toward all of the countries of "South America" the same savage hatred that imperialists and quislings harbor for Venezuela and Ecuador.
Obviously, we don't deny in any way or to the least degree that one of the aims or a targets of the build-up in Colombia is aggression against Venezuela and Ecuador (once again).
We are sure that the build-up in Colombia contemplates these two aggressive operations against Venezuela and Ecuador. Our point is that it is an mistake to reduce the aims and targets of the build-up to the repression of Colombian revolutionary and democratic forces and to attacks on the sovereignty of Venezuela and Ecuador. We believe that Bolivia is also a target. We believe that Argentina is also a target of the build-up in Colombia. We believe that all of the countries of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean are targets of the imperialist build-up in Colombia. We are perplexed over why reactionaries want to jam the targets of the build-up into only one country (Colombia) or into only three countries (Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador). As for Venezuela and Ecuador, it is not a question of whether the Colombian dictatorship and US imperialists will attack the two countries. Rather, it is a question of whether the evil Uribe-Obama axis will continue to attack to these two countries or, more precisely, whether the imperialists and quislings will intensify their attacks on these two countries.
Our guess is that desire of the worst to squeeze the aims and targets of the build-up in Colombia into operations against either one or three countries has something to do with the involvement of the worst in drug trafficking. They traffic in drugs as an ally of the Colombia dictatorship and as a puppet of the US imperialists. The Colombian dictatorship is the executive committee of the reactionary sector of the Colombian bourgeoisie, a reactionary sector composed of number of contending elements, some pro-Uribe and other anti-Uribe, but all very reactionary. The liberal sector of the Colombian bourgeoisie has very little say, if anything, about what the dictatorship does.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), US military, and US mercenaries fight only those elements of the reactionary sector of the Colombia bourgeoisie engaged in drug trafficking that are anti-Uribe and that refuse to pay about 75% of their drug profits to the US imperialists. The anti-Uribe elements don't want to cut the US imperialists in for 75% of their drug profits. So, the worst (the pro-Uribe) elements see the build-up as a chance to get rid of its competitors (anti-Uribe elements) in the drug trade and possibly collect a larger share of the 25% of the drug profits which the US imperialists currently set aside for their Colombian quislings
DEA agents, US troops, and US mercenaries are heavily engaged in drug trafficking in and out of Colombia. None of these three categories of dope dealers can be prosecuted under Colombian law because they all stand above the rule of law if any law rules in Colombia. A treaty between the US and Colombia says none of these animals can be punished for any crime they commit on Colombian territory.
One of the reasons why the build-up in Colombia plans to attack Venezuela is that in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, anti-drug operations of the Venezuelan government ... once the dope-dealing DEA agents were kicked out of Venezuela ... have been increasingly effective in intercepting cocaine and substances used in processing cocaine. These successful anti-drug operations by the Venezuelan government have cut into the drug profits of the US imperialists and their Colombian quislings.
There is nothing really new or even slightly novel in the identification of "South America" as the target for a "full spectrum" of military operations in the future ... if, of course, military operations are what the US Air Force does. US imperialists say, both among themselves and often before Latin Americans/Caribbeans, that everything south of the border is "backyard."
South America constitutes the bulk of what's south of the border. So, South America is the largest part of the backyard. If the imperialists get South America, they got the backyard. Dialectically, the "backyard" seems to have two main sides -- imperial conceit and local pusillanimity. That is, most of the imperialists think they are lot better than they are. And, some Latin Americans and Caribbeans think they are a lot less than they are. This pusillanimity prevents some Latin Americans and Caribbeans from grasping the gravity of the imperial claim of ownership of the "backyard." So, many Latin Americans and Caribbean summarily dismiss the reference to "South America" as melodrama or exaggeration. But reality is a good teacher for the pusillanimous.
WHAT DOES "FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS" MEAN?
Again, the US Air Force document submitted to the US Congress earlier this year in support of Air Force's requests for taxpayer money says point blank that the build-up in Colombia will provide US imperialists with "an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America."
Now, we wish to switch from the question of where the US imperialists will conduct operations to the question of what kind of operations they will conduct, regardless of location. We see from the above discussion that the bourgeois media and reactionary bourgeois regimes try to justify the build-up in Colombia by saying that build-up is intended to be anti-drug trafficking and anti-terrorist. Or, in other words, the build-up will conduct only two kinds of operations ... anti-drug and anti-terrorist.
Right now, the US imperialists run ... at least ... 1000 different kinds of operations out their military bases, including the infamous operation called "shock and awe" which drops 5000 of the biggest bombs and the most powerful missiles on the most densely populated cities, towns, and villages of country within only 48 hours. Not even the worst say that "shock and awe" is essentially an anti-drug operation or anti-terrorist operation, although "shock and awe" may effect incidentally and peripherally anti-drug and anti-terrorist operations. Even most of the worst concedes that "shock and awe" is essentially an anti-humanity operation designed to exterminate somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 human beings, mostly civilians, within a two day period. If anything, "shock and awe" itself is a terrorist operation rather than anti-terrorist operation because the intent of "shock and awe" is to scare or terrorize a population into immediate surrender to conquest by US imperialists.
So ... does "conducting full spectrum operations," about which the US Air force document expressly refers, mean only two operations or does a full spectrum mean conducting at least 1000 operations, including "shock and awe?" Is the "full spectrum" two or more than two? The bourgeois media and reactionary bourgeois regimes say, in this case, a "full spectrum" is only two.
On the "South America" and the "full spectrum" things, it hard to be more perceptive, prescient, and lucid than Eva Golinger, as this August 2009 interview [before the recent exposure of the US Air Force document] shows.
WHAT DOES "COOPERATIVE SECURITY LOCATION" MEAN?
"Establishing a Cooperative Security Location (CSL) in Palanquero [one of the seven new US bases in Colombia] best supports the COCOM's (Command Combatant's) Theater Posture Strategy and demonstrates our commitment to this relationship. Development of this CSL provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters," states a document prepared by the United States Air Force, submitted to the US Congress in May 2009 in order to persuade congress to fund a US military build-up in Colombia during 2010 fiscal year.
The US imperialist War College loves to wax philosophical about the nature and essence of US military facilities. The War College occupies 500 acres in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and caters to high-level personnel, both military and civilians. The US Army, for example, sends only army's colonels or lieutenant colonels to the War College to be train how to kill. Many of the colonels, lieutenant colonels, and high-level civilians have read Hegel, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Lukacs, and the 20th century philosophers on mathematical philosophy. Of course, a base ... one of the subjects on which the War College fixates ... is only a base and will be only a base as long as it exists, but the War College still dwells conceptually on a base as if the War College were in pursuit of an elixir.
What is a "Cooperative Security Location" or, in other words, what is a "CSL?"
A Cooperative Security Location (CSL) is a US military term for a US imperialist base in its early stages of development, evolution, and construction. A CSL base provides support and access on a continental scale ... e.g., at the moment largely in Latin America and Africa ... to savage, degenerate, and genocidal US troops and mercenaries. This kind of base warehouses conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction for use in any and all contingencies that arise anywhere on a given continent. In the early stages of development, a CSL formally remains the territory of the host country which the US imperialist regime in Washington seeks to occupy in part. In this case, the host country is Colombia.
Again, in the early stages of development, a CSL base often engages in extensive construction projects to warehouse a wide array of weapons, especially fighter planes, tanks, mountainous amounts of ammunition, as well as chemical and biological weapons which pose extreme hazards to the host country. In the middle stages of development of a CSL, the construction projects are generally more designed to erect accommodations for a large scale deployment of savage, degenerate, and genocidal US troops and mercenaries as well as additional conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
Once the CSL base reaches this middle stage of development, the sovereignty of the host country over the US military base is significantly diluted, but not formally annulled. For example, representatives of the security forces of the host country are occasionally allowed to visit the US base on the host country territory with the written permission from the US embassy. But, in middle stage of development, the host country [here, Colombia] is not allowed in any way to interfere with military and intelligence operations which US imperialism conducts from the base, even if the operations violate the laws of the host country and international law.
The final stage of development of a CSL consists principally of the assertion of de facto US sovereignty over the base. The host country where the fully developed US base is located may get an annual rental payment ... usually between $ 5,000,000 and $10,000,000 per year ... from the US imperialists. But otherwise the host country fully cedes that part of its territory which the base occupies. The host country further cedes "easements" or terrestrial rights to the imperialists to use, when ever they choose and how ever they choose, related water, land and air space resources of the host country for operations the US base conducts. The US imperialists view an attempt by a host country to remove genocidal US troops and animalistic US mercenaries or to remove their weapons of mass destruction from a fully developed US military base as either an act of war or a declaration of war.
Cuba, of course, is the world's best known victim of stolen territory used or abused to accommodate a fully developed US military base on which and from which both Cuban and international law are violated in the most savage, degenerate, and genocidal manner. During the Bush, Jr regime in the USA (2001-2009), US imperialism opened, so far, about 70 US concentration camps, scattered over the globe, that now hold over 500,000 political prisoners and prisoners of war who are tortured and murdered with impunity under US law.
Although the US Air Force document, which Eva Golinger and others recently exposed, doesn't mention these US concentration camps, many of these US concentration camps are being upgraded by numerous construction projects to later began their evolution as CSLs, in line with abstruse specifications of the War College.
Currently, the US imperialists are openly and methodically developing CSLs to fulfil their imperial ambitions, down the road, for continental conquests or conquest on a continental scale as the US Air Force document suggests with its reference to "South America" and as the War College's concept of a CSL suggests. So far, the main targets of the CSL threat from US imperialism are Africa and Latin America/ Caribbean, both operations on a continental scale.
The proposed $47 million for construction projects at the Palanquero base in Colombia during 2010, alone, exceeds the amount of money the US imperialists spent on their base at Manta, Ecuador over the preceding 10-year period, ending in September 2009. In September 2009, Ecuadorian revolutionaries kicked the US imperialists out of the Manta base. So, for reasons not yet clear, the US imperialists seem to be in a big hurry to complete their build-up in Colombia.
IS THIS CHIEFLY A CLASS STRUGGLE OR A NATIONAL STRUGGLE?
Naturally, class struggles ... say, for example, the Colombian dictatorship vs FARC ... are struggles between classes. National struggles ... say, the Colombian dictatorship vs South America ... are struggles between or among nations, but ... for God's sake ... we must not forget that each nation is composed of a combination of classes.
The concept of sovereignty, which plays a big role in national struggles, goes something like this ... "Sovereignty is the exclusive right to exercise supreme power over a people and their territory." Imperialism seeks the destruction of the sovereignty of other people by stealing "supreme power." US imperialism says, in Colombia, it didn't steal supreme power. US imperialists insist they bought it.
US imperialism assigns administrative responsibilities as well as delegates administrative authority to "president" Alvaro Uribe and other Colombian government representatives. The Uribe, the so-called "president" executes policies formulated by US imperialists in Washington and emailed to him. But if this so-called "president" oversteps ... in any way or to the slightest degree ... his imperially assigned responsibilities or his imperially delegated authority, then he will be overthrown by the imperialists just like Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 or Bosch in the Dominican Republic in 1963 or Allende in Chile in 1973 or Aristide in Haiti in 2004 or Zelaya in Honduras in 2009.
The US imperialists attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002 because Chavez "overstepped" from moment he rose to power.
In all, US imperialists have perpetrated against the sovereignty of Latin America and the Caribbean about 400 invasions, assassinations, coups, naval blockades, military occupations, aerial bombardments, kidnappings of heads of state, torture-terrorism-genocide schools [e.g., the US Army's "School of the Americas"], confiscation of territory [e.g.,Panama and Cuba] and every other conceivable act of aggression that is humanly possible, during the last 150 years.
As the sword of Damocles hangs over Alvaro Uribe's head by a single hair ... waiting for Uribe to overstep, this so-called "president" of Colombia pretends his imperially assigned responsibilities or his imperially delegated authority constitutes "supreme power," that is, the key element in the concept of sovereignty. This "sword" that hangs over Uribe's head is the imperialist domination of the Colombian military, police, and intelligence services which are obsequious in the extreme to orders from the bourgeois regime in Washington. Either the treacherous senior officers of the Colombian police, totally under FBI/DEA control, or the treacherous senior officers of the Colombian military, under absolute CIA/DOD control, will blow off the head of any so-called Colombian "president," especially somebody like Uribe, if either the FBI director or CIA director gave the order to kill by snapping his finger. CIA and FBI exercise a veto over promotions and job assignments in their respective fields of all senior Colombian military and police officials. If the US imperialists don't like a certain Colombian candidate for an important military or police post, he doesn't get the job. All senior officers at or above the rank of major or the equivalent of a major are corrupted by monthly electronic deposits of cash into various financial accounts, usually accessible by debit or credit cards. US imperialists use part of the profits they obtain from the Colombian drug trade to corrupt senior officials of the Colombian police and military.
Despite the billions of dollars spent on the corruption of the ruling classes of Latin America/Caribbean and this interminable series of bloodthirsty and barbaric aggressions by US imperialists to install, throughout the region, regimes like the repellent Colombian dictatorship, this thing, widely called sovereignty, continues to grow, spread, and strengthen throughout the region.
What weakens the sway of US imperialism and its quislings [like Uribe] over the region?
During the last 50 years, a number of things happened. These things include (1) the 1959 Cuban Revolution, (2) then 1999 Venezuelan Revolution, (3) then 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and its 2006 Sandinista comeback, (4) then 2006 Bolivian Revolution, and (5) the nascent and ongoing Ecuadorian Revolution.
US imperialists see where these things lead and fights them with maniac hostility.
These things are huge setbacks ... defeats ... hard blows for US imperialism to suffer. They inflict a lot of pain on the imperial corpus. These things in these countries are really two things. First, they are the rise of the working class to power or, at least, the integration of the working class into a ruling class of varied content. Second, these things are the restoration of the sovereignty of the people over themselves and over their territory, regardless of the ideological and political composition of the ruling class.
Other things also happened to the century-old US hegemony over Latin America and Caribbean. Bourgeois liberals, in a number of countries, rose to power -- e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Dominica, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Honduras [until June 2009], El Salvador (?), etc. who firmly demand the restoration of sovereignty even though they are wary of or wishy-washy about an expanded revolutionary proletarian presence in key positions of the State, especially in the military, police, intelligence agencies or even in the utterly disreputable bourgeois media, nominally independent of bourgeois regimes.
The tie-in and this revolutionary ascendency in many places in the region imply that the mass of the working class ... not yet all of it, but just most of it ... sees through the filthy lies of the putrid bourgeois media about the "liberty" that bourgeois democracy bestows, about the "prosperity" that capitalism produces, and about an "ethical culture" that bourgeois society fosters. Thus, leaving imperialism with only a military option to preserve itself and its puppets.
This tie-in is a strange-looking thing. Many on the Left presupposed its impossibility but now more or less concede its existence and importance although with bewilderment.
The tie-in requires revolutionaries to adjust tactically to the liberals and the liberals to the revolutionaries.
The build-up in Colombia is a stupid and vicious military response to the rise and the spread of the glorious forces of the revolutionary proletariat and to the emergence of this strange-looking tie-in which struggles ... with astounding success ... to isolate US imperialism in the region diplomatically, politically, and morally
So, this struggle over the build-up seems chiefly a national struggle over the question of sovereignty, both inside and outside of Colombia. But this national struggle is also one with important class and ethical implications. This national struggle ... continental in scale ... is unlikely to be won by revolutionaries and liberals without the revolutionary-liberal tie-in, even if the liberal participation in the tie-in is often rather scant.
CONCLUSION
We need to talk about some of the issues, dealt with above, more operationally and also do some guessing about possible outcomes of the national struggle and about key factors producing these outcomes.
As the immortal Plato said in his eternal "Republic," the individual must leave the light above and descend into the darkness of the cave. It is transparent ... even in the darkness of the cave ... that US imperialists, like the diseased-minded German Nazis of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, are plotting, already with over 800 US military bases pre-positioned all over the world, to wage war on the world, including Latin America and Caribbean, with the assistance of reliable allies, Reliable allies include the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, plus the most degenerate and despicable members of NATO. Also important are a category of US imperialist allies .... which are strategically positioned among the regions of the world ... called "major non-NATO allies."
So far, in Latin America, only Argentina has been officially recognized by the US imperialists as "major non-NATO ally." But Argentina isn't, at all, acting presently like such an ally. Argentina doesn't appear to be so "reliable" to the imperialists.
US imperialists really want Brazil as their "major non-NATO ally" in the region. But as long as bourgeois liberals stay in power in Rio, it is unlikely that Brazil will show itself sufficiently servile to imperial commands to get "major non-NATO ally" designation and eligibility to the most sensitive US-sponsored military cooperation programs. Most of these "most sensitive military cooperation programs" consist of shameless and cold-blooded formulations, in extreme detail, of "contingency plans" for the conquest of Latin American and Caribbean countries and the training by instruction and military exercises of local armed forces in these countries ... targeted for imperial conquest ... to reinforce and support savage US imperialist troops and mercenaries as the imperialists conquer.
At this time, Brazil is viewed as too wishy-washy to be any kind of ally of US imperialism. Let's look at recent history. First, in April 2002, Bush phoned Lula and asked for Lula's support to send a "OAS Democratic mission" ... that is, a bunch of savage US troops and mercenaries ... to defend the faltering bourgeois dictatorship that, in April 2002, had overthrown democracy in Venezuela. To his everlasting credit, Lula refused and warned other Latin American governments what the fiend, George W. Bush, was up to. Second, two years later, in Feb. 2004, Bush phoned Lula again and asked for Lula's support for another "OAS Democratic mission" to defend the bourgeois dictatorship that Bush, on February 24, 2004, had installed, with US troops, in Haiti in an imperialist-instigated overthrow of Haitian democracy. Lula this time, like a bourgeois liberal, immediately agreed and sent Brazilian troops to help Bush occupy conquered Haiti. Third, in March 2007, Bush didn't phone, rather he flew to Rio and asked for Lula's propaganda and ideological support for the diversion of 1/3 of the world's corn crop from food to fuel production, deliberately triggering immense famine and hideous inflation of food prices throughout the world. Lula joyfully welcomed Bush's animalistic proposal. Fourth, in June 2009, Lula strongly and boldly demanded, in both words and in deeds, the restoration of democracy in Honduras.
These four historical instances show that Brazil ... perhaps, the most influential country in Latin America ... is kind of wishy-washy. Therefore, neither revolutionaries nor counter-revolutionaries should expect consistent support or consistent opposition from Brazil on anything. When US imperialism attacks "South America," as the US Air Force document expressly contemplates, Brazil could go either way and which ever way it goes may determine the outcome of the struggle.
Although the Colombian dictatorship doesn't enjoy the status or, more correctly, ignominy of a designation as a "major non-NATO ally" of the US imperialists, the Colombian dictatorship, the perfidious dog it is, acts as if it already has the designation. Clearly, the US imperialists have conferred on the Colombian dictatorship limited eligibility to certain military cooperation programs to which NATO allies and major non-NATO allies are otherwise exclusively entitled.
SAM is indubitably one of the key factors in the determination of the outcome of these national and national-liberation struggles.
Shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) are typically guided weapons and are a serious threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters, whether the helicopters are chiefly used for troop-mercenary transport, supply or assault. SAMs, affordable and widely available through a variety of sources, have been used successfully over the past three decades in many armed conflicts. They can be purchased in either the legal or black market, anywhere from a few hundred dollars for older models to upwards of almost a quarter million dollars for newer, more capable SAMs. Twenty-five countries, including the Iran, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Russia now produce SAMs. SAMs generally have a target detection range of about 6 miles and an engagement range of about 4 miles. So, they can be real handy in an "engagement"... tactically speaking. To defend against the imperialist build-up in Colombia, the revolutionary forces of Latin America and Caribbean should saturate Latin America and the Caribbean with ... at least ... 50,000 SAMs.
SAM is one of the ways to negate the build-up.
Sam negates the build-up because the build-up is chiefly about transportation, especially air mobility. These 10 US imperialist bases in Colombia and, so far, 10 other ones elsewhere in the region [so, 20 in all] will be used to move savage imperialist troops, even more savage US mercenaries, and their equipment to what the War College delicately calls the "theater." Good ole SAM can stop movement in mid-air between these bases and the "theater." In Iraq, most of the counter-measures attached to aircraft, targeted by SAMs, proved ineffective before the heroic and glorious Iraqi Patriotic Resistance depleted its supply of SAMs and similar equipment during the first four years of intense armed struggle against the imperialists. The possibility of depletion explains why revolutionary forces in Latin America and the Caribbean will need a big supply of SAMs to last much longer than four years.
As for FARC, the legitimate representative of the Colombian people in the current state of belligerency, this organization already has SAMs and it has had them for some time. FARC has SA 7s, 14s, 16s, and 18s made in the former USSR. FARC also has Stingers from the USA and Mistrals from France. Regrettably, FARC doesn't have enough of these things, but FARC is busy making acquisitions. FARC purchased ... at very good prices ... some of its SAs from reactionary bourgeois regimes in Nicaragua, especially the pigsties of Enrique Bolanos and Arnoldo Aleman. Both sold anything to anybody for any price. As FARC grows its cache of SAMs and develops its capabilities with remote-controlled roadside bombs, FARC will show the Colombian dictatorship and vile US imperialists and expansionists what kind of stuff FARC and Latin American revolutionaries, in general, are made of.
Imperialists are trying to get "South America." They intend to use everything they got ... namely, a full spectrum .. to get "South America." To set up "South America" to be gotten, the imperialists need bases.
But these bases must be in countries where reactionary bourgeois regimes are abjectly servile ... in principle, disposition, and behavior ... to imperial wishes.
SAMs and other measures from revolutionaries and liberals may cause the imperialists to have second thoughts.
Arthur Shaw
arthur.shaw@vheadline.com
http://www.vheadline.com/shaw
Constitution of the
