Over the last few weeks, a strange set of events have taken place in both South America and the USA revolving around Colombia’s attack on bases of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by their Spanish acronym “FARC”) in Ecuador. The facts are rather straight forward. Military units of Colombia attacked a FARC base that was NOT in Colombia. In the ensuing attack, they killed a top commander of the FARC - Raul Reyes - along with more than 20 other people, several of whom were non-combatants. Following the attack, the Colombians claimed that they had captured a laptop computer which contained evidence that proved the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador had been assisting the FARC.

At this point, the plot thickened. First, the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela condemned the attack and mobilized their respective militaries to move to their borders with Colombia. The outcome of this was and actually is unpredictable.

Second, here in the USA, the Bush administration followed an unsurprising course of supporting Colombia’s violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty and international law. In fact, the USA was the ONLY member of the Organization of American States (OAS) to support this violation. Other Latin American countries either immediately condemned the Colombian action or expressed deep reservations as to this initiative.

Also in the USA, the media largely supported the illegal Colombian attack, but additionally jumped to the conclusion that the Colombian assertion of Venezuelan and Ecuadorian support for the FARC was valid. They did so, as on the editorial page of the Washington Post, without a shred of proof, very reminiscent of the response to the coup against President Chavez in 2002, supported by much of the mainstream US media, but based on a distortion of the facts as to what had actually transpired.

Ultimately the OAS issued a declaration asserting that the Colombian assault had been a violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty. This action by the OAS represented a clear slap at the USA. The OAS declaration, however, has not seemed to have had any impact on the US media and its attitude toward Colombia’s violation of international law.

The Colombian attack on the FARC base, along with the Colombian escalation of personal attacks on Venezuelan President Chavez, are both most odd. President Chavez has over the months been involved in hostage negotiations with the FARC, trying to secure the release of prisoners long held. In the beginning, Chavez’s involvement had the approval of the Colombian government. In the middle of these negotiations, however, Colombia’s President Uribe suddenly and inexplicably began a polemic against President Chavez, throwing around various accusations. While Chavez was, nevertheless, able to secure some releases, the timing of Uribe’s tirade was most strange.

Targeting Raul Reyes was also peculiar. FARC commander Reyes had been involved in discussions with the French government concerning the release of hostages, a fact acknowledged by the French themselves. Additionally, Reyes was the public face of the FARC and was known largely as a diplomat, attempting to enter into discussions with various organizations and nations revolving around the on-going Colombian conflict. Thus, the killing of Reyes - which was certainly no accident - if anything ups the ante and makes a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Colombia less likely.

In this sense, President Chavez’s comparison of Colombia with Israel, which was ridiculed in the mainstream US media, starts to make sense. At various moments the Israeli government has undertaken military actions against Palestinian leaders (almost irrespective of organizational affiliation) precisely when such groups, including the Islamist group Hamas, have either declared a truce, a cease-fire, or an openness to negotiations. The assassination of political leaders of the Palestinian movement has become a modus operandi of the Israeli military, thus making a peaceful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that much more difficult, since the situation has been so inflamed.

In Colombia, the FARC, which is an organization that descends from peasant militias of the 1960s, carried out a major truce in the late 1980s and early 1990s in which it agreed to engage in peaceful electoral politics. The political coalition it formed ran candidates for office, only to have their candidates regularly murdered by right-wing death squads, often connected directly with the Colombian government. Eventually the FARC abandoned such electoral activity.

Subsequent truces have been violated by both sides, and the activities of the FARC have at various occasions been hideous if not criminal, but the hostage negotiations that were being conducted by President Chavez seemed to offer a glimmer for more substantial negotiations. President Chavez’s suggestion that the FARC not be treated as a terrorist grouping but rather be treated as a military insurgency, therefore, is not as outlandish as the US media attempted to present it. In the context of attempting to arrive at a peaceful resolution of the hostage situation, not to mention the larger conflict, it is nearly impossible to have a meeting of the minds if one side is treated as illegitimate, irrespective of either one’s attitude toward them or the amount of territory and people that said group happens to control. Undermining the hostage negotiations and the killing of the FARC leader on Ecuadorian territory derails the possibility for a peaceful resolution and makes the continuation of military conflict that much more likely. One can deduce that this was precisely the objective of President Uribe who has repeatedly suggested that a military resolution to the Colombian conflict is not only possible but advisable.

President Chavez’s paralleling the actions of the Colombians and that of the Israelis is not a rhetorical device. He is identifying a practice that flows from President Bush’s polarizing view of the world: one is either with us (the USA, or its allies) or with the terrorists; there is no middle ground. Bush has promoted such approaches and supported governments that, assuming they are allied with the USA, take a completely un-compromising view of all insurgencies, irrespective of the socio-economic or political sources of such insurgencies. Thus, the Kurdish sovereignty movement in Turkey has been under vicious repression for years, without so much as a squirm from the USA. Instead, the USA sides with Turkey in blaming the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as being the source of the problem. The Philippine government has condemned as terrorist and carried out repeated military actions against the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army, despite the international recognition that this is a civil war, and despite the CPP/NPA’s willingness to engage in peaceful negotiations. The Israeli military strikes against Palestinian leaders and the continuation of the internationally condemned Occupation all prolong the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, pressing the Palestinians toward desperate measures. And now we witness Colombia’s illegal intrusion into Ecuador, denounced by the entirety of the OAS, except for the Bush administration.

To borrow from President Kennedy, by making the peaceful resolution of a conflict impossible, the Bush administration and its allies make a military situation inevitable. Given the mind of a leader - Bush - who refuses to acknowledge nuance and complexity, such a course of action is logical, if not being at the same time irrational and disastrous.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is Executive Editor of The Black Commentator. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

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