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WORD COUNT
624
MAY 7, 2008
WHITE HOUSE ISOLATED
IN LATIN AMERICA, CRIES “TERRORISM” – by Mark Weisbrot
Of all the nonsense
that we hear regularly about Venezuela, the idea that the country is a
"security threat" is probably the most ridiculous. For six years now,
since the Bush Administration supported a failed coup attempt against
the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez,
Washington has been sporadically accusing Venezuela of links to
"terrorism."
During those six
years, the charges have been made by anonymous officials, and the U.S.
government never produced any supporting evidence. Now the Colombian
government claims it has proof of the Chavez government's support for
the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a guerrilla group
that has been active for four decades. The “evidence” comes from
documents alleged to have been found on laptops captured by the
Colombian military in a cross-border bombing and incursion into
neighboring Ecuador on March 1.
As with the
allegations that led us into the Iraq war, there is less here than meets
the eye. First, as the New York Times recently acknowledged, it is
"impossible to authenticate the files independently."
Second, even if some
of the documents are real, there is so far nothing showing that
Venezuela provided material aid to the FARC. For example, a claim that
made headlines all over the world about Chavez supposedly providing $300
million turned out to be based on a far-fetched interpretation of a
single alleged document.
Nonetheless, the Bush
Administration is now investigating whether it should place Venezuela on
a special list of "state sponsors of terrorism," which would imply at
least some kind of economic sanctions. Some right-wing Republicans in
the U.S. House of Representatives have come up with a similar effort in
the form of a proposed resolution.
There will be much
more of this posturing, combined with wild accusations, since this is an
election year. The last two presidential elections were determined by
the votes of a few hundred thousand right-wing Cuban Americans (by no
means all of them) in Florida. These voters hate Venezuela and we can
expect that many politicians will pander to them. On the other hand,
Venezuela is our fourth largest oil supplier and a major importer of
U.S. goods. Saner heads will take that into account.
The cheap political
points scored by politicians here come at a cost in the rest of the
hemisphere. The Bush Administration, which is attempting to isolate
Venezuela, has actually accomplished the opposite. It is Washington that
is more isolated than ever before in Latin America. When Colombia
invaded Ecuador, almost every country south of the Rio Grande condemned
this violation of Ecuador's sovereignty, which was also widely seen as
carried out with U.S. help or at least approval. When the ensuing
political and diplomatic fight was settled ? with no help from
Washington ? President Lula da Silva of Brazil declared Chavez to be
"the great peacemaker" in the conflict.
The same is true for
the hostage problem in Colombia, where Chavez's efforts to mediate
received widespread praise from Europe, Latin America, and even the
families of the U.S. military contractors held by the FARC. Everyone but
Washington appears to be interested in a negotiated solution to release
the hostages held by the FARC. When Venezuela mediated a release of
hostages last December 31, representatives of Argentina, Brazil,
Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, France, and Switzerland were there. Washington
was noticeably absent.
Washington has
alienated Latin America: through its economic policy prescriptions,
which are widely associated with Latin America's unprecedented long-term
economic failure; through its proposed "Free Trade Agreements," which
grow more unpopular every year; and through its militaristic and failed
"war on drugs." The Bush Administration thinks it can turn this around
by scapegoating Venezuela and hurling accusations of support for
terrorism. It won't work; nobody in the region is buying it
--
Mark Weisbrot [s
Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in
Washington, D.C. [www.cepr.net] – A photo of Mark Weisbrot is available
CLICK HERE
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