Case in point, Colombia. Colombia has fought well-financed drug gangs and communist insurgents/terrorists for forty-some years now. Finally, Colombia is clearly beating these thugs. Yet some Americans are so angered at some of the tactics of the Colombians that they'd sell out all Colombians, using a quite illegal killing to run up "enemy" body counts as an excuse:
The scandal comes at a particularly delicate moment for Uribe. President-elect Barack Obama has cited human rights concerns in opposing the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement President Bush wants ratified before he leaves office in January. Obama told Bush on Tuesday that he opposes including the deal in an economic stimulus package the U.S. Congress is to begin debating next week.
Uribe, meanwhile, is cleaning house: A week before Obama's election, he ordered the biggest-ever purge of Colombia's military, firing 20 officers — including three generals and four colonels — for negligence. On election day, the army commander resigned.
Armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla told The Associated Press that the Montes case contributed to the sacking of the commanding general of the 7th Division, based in Medellin. Prosecutors say there is no evidence Leonardo was a rebel — or for that matter anything more than a 33-year-old farm worker.
So some in America would punish Colombia for this. Even though Colombia was desperate for decades in the face of brutal terrorism supported and cheered by the Global Left. And despite the fact that the government is now trying to find those who fought dirty.
Too bad Colombia's government isn't our enemy, torturing and oppressing all of their citizens and pursuing nuclear weapons. Then, those same Americans who condemn Colombia now would be insisting that it would be the height of nuanced diplomacy to talk to the Colombians and reward them with trade benefits to get them to halt (or just claim they halted) their nuclear programs. And lots of Nuanced Americans would be describing how only one faction in the Colombian government was killing terrorists (and some innocents) outside of the legal system, so we can hardly blame the central government.
Such is the deal when you ally with the American government--you get the harping criticism of our Left right along with our aid. Are we having fun yet?
And as an aside, this case is why I never wanted to measure our progress in Iraq by the body count metric.
