U.S. Base Deal for Colombia: Back to the Status Quo

[Judi Lynn]

U.S. Base Deal for Colombia: Back to the Status Quo
By John Lindsay-Poland and Susana Pimiento, October 8, 2010

As the dust settles on the August 10 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling declaring invalid the U.S.-Colombia military bases agreement, politicians and analysts are saying that the decision was for the better. Most of those voices come from former supporters of the deal —including Liberal Party presidential candidate, Rafael Pardo.

Last October, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement allowing the United States to use at least seven military bases in Colombia. U.S. troops and contractors already operated from several bases, and U.S. military engagement with Colombia has included more than $6 billion in military assistance since 2000. But the new agreement provoked regional condemnation because of extraterritorial aims outlined for the U.S. presence, and domestic opposition to the imposition on Colombian sovereignty. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez temporarily severed diplomatic relations and suspended billions of dollars worth of trade with Colombia in response.

Increasingly it appears that a new agreement will not be negotiated or submitted for approval by the Colombian Congress any time soon. Such a move would not only provide space for opponents of the agreement, but risk its defeat, if not in Congress, then in the Constitutional Court's mandated review. On August 27, The Washington Post reported that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was “leaning toward” not submitting the agreement to Congress, and quoted a State Department official as saying “We're confident that in the intermediate period, or if there is no agreement for whatever reason, our older, existing agreements will permit us to continue our robust and effective cooperation with the Santos administration on counterterrorism and counternarcotics.”

The Constitutional Court ruling declaring the agreement invalid came at a perfect time to help mend broken Colombia-Venezuela relations. Supporters of the base deal in Colombia, which unlike other bases was not exclusively for drug interdiction, interpreted it as a guarantee against the supposed prospect of Venezuelan aggression. Yet, the broken relations had a disastrous economic effect on Colombian exports. Until the military bases deal was signed, Venezuela was the second largest market for Colombian exports.

Furthermore, countries in the region were not happy with the tension and had offered to mediate. So, it did not come as a surprise that only three days after President Santos took office, he received President Chavez in the Caribbean town of Santa Marta, at the hacienda where Simon Bolivar died, and both governments committed to mend their broken relations. Colombia and Ecuador have also been progressively patching up their differences since the March 2008 Colombian raid into Ecuador that prompted Quito to sever diplomatic ties. With these bilateral détentes, the militarist rationale in Colombia for the base agreement disappears.

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[Peace Patriot]

1. It remains amazing to me that this big U.S. military presence in Colombia is not a BIG DEAL in the

news here, but then my political consciousness was formed in an era when a thousand U.S. military 'advisors' in Vietnam WAS a Big Deal, and politicians had to lie about what they were there for, and of course about the escalation to tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and a full scale war.

Since then, and especially with the Bush Junta, U.S. military presence at numerous bases in a foreign country and the larding of BILLIONS of U.S. taxpayer dollars on a foreign military have become ROUTINE and hardly merit a headline, even when that foreign military is accused, by numerous human rights groups, of killing thousands of trade unionists, political leftists, human rights workers and others, and engages in policies that encourage commanders to kill civilians.

Big yawn.

I can still be shocked by this. Maybe that's a good sign.

And I think I know what this black hole in the 'news' is about: The "military-industrial complex" has been joined together with the "corpo-fascist media complex" in furtherance of the war profiteering goals of both. Thus, we have the New York Times, a once respected newspaper that, in 1971, published the "Pentagon Papers" in defiance of the Nixon government, which was prolonging the Vietnam War, turning around in 2002 and publishing outright lies about WMDs in Iraq on behalf of the Bush Junta and yet another horrible, unjust, illegal, mass murdering war. One can only presume that the New York Slimes' owners are now benefiting from war, as is the entire corpo-fascist press. They have forfeited respect as journalist--and their coverage of the amazing leftist democracy movement in Latin America over the last decade only confirms that view. They have become warmongers and tools of the "military-industrial complex."

This U.S. military buildup in Colombia and in the region, and U.S. fostering more of a 70 year civil war in Colombia, and opposition to a peaceful settlement of it, and larding billions on a country and its military with one of the worst human rights records on earth, is quite possibly the most important U.S. news story of this century, thus far, outside of the on-going horrors in Iraq and Afghanistan and how those horrors began. This OP about the Colombian Supreme Court declaring the latest U.S./Colombia military agreement unconstitutional is likely only a hiatus in this important story. As the author points out, the U.S. military ALREADY occupies at least seven military bases in Colombia, and it already has at least 1,500 military personnel in the country and is already at the least advising, aiding and abetting the Colombian military's slaughters of Colombians, including armed FARC guerrillas, political dissenters, trade unionists and others, and including ordinary people doing nothing at all--the "false positives" murders and murders of peasant farmers. WHAT IS THE U.S. MILITARY DOING IN COLOMBIA with all this killing is going on? When did this become OUR civil war?

The only surprise to me in this article is the information--if true--that U.S. military personnel including U.S. military 'contractors' did not have total diplomatic immunity in Colombia prior to the secretly negotiated military agreement of last year, signed by U.S./Bushwack ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, and Bush Jr. pal, Alvaro Uribe. I had presumed that there was informal immunity, and had wondered why Brownfield was so anxious to get an official SIGNATURE on this immunity before Uribe got booted out (--cut loose by the CIA, except for personal protection guarantees?). The promoters of this agreement, in Colombia and in the Pentagon, argued that this latest agreement merely ratifies "existing arrangements," and I presumed that one of those "arrangements" was immunity. This author says otherwise--that the immunity was unique to this agreement.

If U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors' now revert to a status of no immunity, this adds more urgency to Brownfield's motives in getting that signature, especially if U.S. soldiers/'contractors,' or any other U.S. military operatives and/or their commanders--up to and including the "commander in chief"--get charged with crimes in Colombia. Whether the Supreme Court's ruling changes the status of U.S. soldiers/'contractors' or others, as to immunity, or not, this agreement can be used in legal proceedings, should legal action be brought for crimes committed by the U.S. military in Colombia, and it can be argued that it is a "fuzzy area" of the law. It was the law for about a year until it was ruled unconstitutional.

It's quite interesting, in this context, that the U.S. State Department recently 'fined' Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" (don't know who) in Colombia, "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." Did those acts fall within the last year, while this total diplomatic immunity was in effect? If so, lawyers could certainly argue that, if Blackwater committed crimes during that period, they are immune--by signature of the president of Colombia. And the "fuzzy area" would include questions about its application while it was in effect, and questions about whether or not it was/is retroactive to crimes before that period (especially if there was an informal immunity--say, a handshake between Uribe and Bush that Blackwater could train assassins in Colombia).

I think the question is, quite literally, what was the U.S. military DOING in Colombia, that required "total diplomatic immunity," as well as what the hell IS the U.S. military doing in Colombia? What is its presence there for?

The U.S. military is also now in supposedly de-militarized Costa Rica. They are in Honduras, with the U.S. military's bases there having been secured by a righwing coup d'etat. (Ecuador, also a member of ALBA--the Venezuela-organized trade group--as Honduras was before the coup, recently threw the U.S. military out of Ecuador. None of the Bolivarian countries permits the U.S. military to operate in its territory. Honduras may well have been next to evict them.) The U.S. military is in the Caribbean (with the newly reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet). It's in Panama. It's in Haiti. And it's operating a prison and a torture dungeon under no one's law on the other end of the island of Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay.

Aside from Colombia's civil war--stoked by $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid--Latin America is one of the most peaceful regions on earth. It has no enemies (except those in Washington DC). It is under no threat. It has undergone a quite remarkable, peaceful transformation to democracy--after decades of U.S.-supported heinous dictators and rightwing, "neo-liberal" looters--and it is peacefully trading with countries all over the world. WHY is the U.S. trying to militarize Latin America? Is it for more than keeping billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars flowing to war profiteers in the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs"? WHY has that "war" become a MILITARY war? What is all this militarism FOR?

These are questions that the New York Slimes and brethren will never ask. But they NEED asking--because what we may be looking at is Vietnam II--a sneaky buildup, amidst demagoguery about "communism," all sorts of U.S. covert ops going on--psyops, disinformation, dirty tricks, destabilization ploys--to prepare the ground, and, once all the pieces are in place, the American people may find themselves in another war--wondering, as in Iraq, as in Vietnam: How did that happen?