On Saturday, Colombia launched an attack on a FARC camp in Ecuador, with, Ecuador plausibly alleges, U.S. support. Colombia's President Uribe -- a close Bush ally -- lied to Ecuador's President Correa about the attack, claiming it was in "hot pursuit." Ecuador's soldiers, when they reached the scene and recovered the bodies of FARC members who had been killed, reported to Correa that they had been asleep when attacked. They were in their underwear. Correa called it a "massacre." Both Ecuador and Venezuela have moved troops to their borders with Colombia, warned Colombia about violating their sovereignty, and cut diplomatic relations with Colombia.Obama Glosses Colombian Attack in Ecuador; Clinton Calls for Escalation Against Venezuela
Colombia's attack was a flagrant violation of Ecuador's sovereignty. "Hot pursuit" was Colombia's only possible defense. There is no right in international law to engage in military attacks into another country with which you are not at war if it is not an immediate continuation of an engagement that began within your borders (unless your action is explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council.) If you say that international law doesn't matter, you're essentially saying that Colombia has special rights to violate international law because it's a U.S. ally. That may sell well inside the Beltway, but it's going to sell very poorly, in general, from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.
I'm getting fairly used to taking sides against prevailing U.S. positions on Foreign Policy. Time and again I find myself asking why the U.S. feels that it and its allies are bound by no rules. "Anything goes" is the mantra when it comes to our own actions. And anything that anyone else does is an act of terrorism or worse. It is clear to me who the "terrorist" is in nearly any world relation of the day. I just have difficulty understanding why it is so clear to me yet so ambiguous to others.
Is it so difficult to understand that our principals should be what sets us apart from common criminals? That when we behave criminally or exhibit criminal attitudes toward others that it simply exacerbates the problem. Is "two wrongs don't make a right" really that difficult of a concept to understand?
Chavez may well be a saber rattling thug. But his threats have not been followed by atrocities committed against other nations. That is an assertion that the Bush cronies cannot make.
There is a very real pattern of the Bush regime and its allies to meet the "threat" of successful diplomacy with military escalation. This is their self-defeating, self- destructive nature in virtually all of their policies and the outcome of virtually all of their decisions. Ecuador says it was in talks with rebels to release 12 hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans, that the talks were in an advanced stage, and that the process was thwarted by the Colombian raid.
If Amerikans cannot get their leaders on the right side of the issue in World Affairs, then we should collectively and figuratively just stay at home and keep our mouths shut. The idea that Amerikans can even sleep at night given our leaders' records is simply beyond me!
