Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated Wednesday that Mexico and Central America were facing an “insurgency” that requires the equivalent of a Plan Colombia in the region. Her comments immediately raised the ire of the Mexican government and sparked fears of expanded U.S. military intervention.
“…we face an increasing threat from a well-organized network drug trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America,” Clinton said. She added that “these drug cartels are now showing more and more indices of insurgency; all of a sudden, car bombs show up which weren’t there before.”
Ironically, Clinton was responding to a question on what the United States was doing regarding its “responsibility for drugs coming north and guns going south.” Instead of answering the question, Clinton compared Mexico to Colombia and made the boldest statement to date about U.S. intervention, including military support, in Mexico’s drug war.
“
t’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago,” Clinton said. And Colombia – it got to the point where more than a third of the country, nearly 40 percent of the country at one time or another was controlled by the insurgents, by FARC. But it’s going to take a combination of improved institutional capacity and better law enforcement and, where appropriate, military support for that law enforcement married to political will to be able to prevent this from spreading and to try to beat it back..” Clinton maintained that Plan Colombia worked and added “we need to figure out what are the equivalents for Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.”
It took no time at all for members of Mexico’s Congress to respond with indignation...\
http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen09162010.html
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