USA May Expand Columbian War
December 5, 2000 9:49 AM Subscribe
USA May Expand Columbian War I know, let's drag the rest of Latin America into this stupid war! Sure sounds good to me. . .
I think a more telling question is where are all the chemicals to process the cocaine coming from? If you guessed US chemical companies, you'd be right.
Unfortunately, if you crack down on the shipments of these chemicals to Columbia, you cut into Dow and DuPont's profit margins. So instead, give Boeing and Lockheed 2 billion dollars for Apache attack helicopters, and use them to kill Columbian peasants who have no other way to survive than to grow coca.
Any way you slice it, it's a nice arrangement for both the big chemical corporations and the big defense contractors. This isn't a war on drugs so much as it is a corporate handout.
posted by snakey at 12:08 PM on December 5, 2000
Unfortunately, if you crack down on the shipments of these chemicals to Columbia, you cut into Dow and DuPont's profit margins. So instead, give Boeing and Lockheed 2 billion dollars for Apache attack helicopters, and use them to kill Columbian peasants who have no other way to survive than to grow coca.
Any way you slice it, it's a nice arrangement for both the big chemical corporations and the big defense contractors. This isn't a war on drugs so much as it is a corporate handout.
posted by snakey at 12:08 PM on December 5, 2000
It is the opinion of ELN second-in-command Antonio Garcia that Plan Colombia will have exactly the effect you describe. I'm inclined to agree. This is a war, not a drug-interdiction effort, and it's not the kind of war that can be won.
Given the cold-war mentality that seems to linger in the US military, I'd bet the fact that Communist rebels control around a quarter of Colombia - and that this fact has been acknowledged by the Colombian government during the course of its peace talks with the rebels - has a lot more to do with the motivation for Plan Colombia than the fact that these rebels finance their operations in part by taxing coca farmers.
-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:27 PM on December 5, 2000
Given the cold-war mentality that seems to linger in the US military, I'd bet the fact that Communist rebels control around a quarter of Colombia - and that this fact has been acknowledged by the Colombian government during the course of its peace talks with the rebels - has a lot more to do with the motivation for Plan Colombia than the fact that these rebels finance their operations in part by taxing coca farmers.
-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:27 PM on December 5, 2000
« Older Screen Wars, | Why not to shop at Cub foods. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by rklawler at 11:24 AM on December 5, 2000