Tag Archives: Terrorism

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Colombia’s war on terrorism and Chile’s war on poverty

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Map of South America
Map of South America

A magnificent column about Colombia’s war on FARC.

Excerpt:

When Juan Manuel Santos came into office as Colombia’s president and emphasized economic issues over the fight against terrorist guerrillas, he was suspected of going soft on those he had combated as minister of defense under the previous administration. Little did his critics know that he was planning the “coup de grace” against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The devastating Sept. 22 attack on FARC headquarters in Colombia’s central Meta province all but signifies the end of the five-decade-old conflict. It will take a little while for the official end to be declared, but this war is pretty much over.

[…]For decades, politicians, academics, human rights activists and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic failed to see that there was nothing romantic, “bien-pensant” or Robin Hoodesque about an organization that killed, maimed, kidnapped and extorted for a totalitarian objective.

Colombia’s solitude was such that even the U.S. began to lose faith in its ally a couple of years ago, refusing to approve a free-trade agreement that Bogota had negotiated at a major political cost.

Colombians did not give up and continued to reclaim territory for civilian rule. Much like the defeat of Venezuela’s Cuba-inspired terrorist guerrillas in the 1960s, Colombia’s victory against FARC is the result of civilians awakening to the evil of totalitarian terror.

We get to hear about spectacular military feats, but how many outside Colombia realize that peasants, factory workers, teachers, students and others joined the struggle to defeat FARC, beautifully symbolized by the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets inside Colombia and around the world in 2008 to clamor for the end of terror?

There are still many challenges ahead. The lesson in courage and perseverance that Colombians have given us suggests they are ready to meet them.

I wish that we could sign a free trade deal with them like Canada’s conservative government. Canada is led by a conservative business-friendly economist, and they are very supportive of capitalist democracies like Colombia. Stephen Harper is Canada’s prime minister. He has economics degrees from the University of Calgary. Like Santos, he is very, very tough on terrorism – favoring increased defense spending to protect Canadian interests abroad. And guess what? Canada also has a free trade agreement with another South American country – Chile.

And Chile is also doing very well, even after the massive earthquake.

Excerpt:

Chile’s peso rose to a 27-month high after a report showed the country’s industrial growth accelerated to the fastest since 2006.

The peso appreciated 0.2 percent to 485.23 per U.S. dollar at 11:43 a.m. New York time, from 486.17 yesterday. The currency touched 483.61, the strongest since June 11, 2008. The peso has risen 13 percent during the quarter and 3.6 percent this month.

Chile’s economy is accelerating after the fifth-largest earthquake in a century struck in February, delaying its recovery from a 2009 recession.

“Retail sales grew and industrial production was better than expected,” said Roberto Melzi, a strategist at Barclays Capital in New York.

Retail sales expanded 13 percent in August from a year earlier, and industrial output grew 6.9 percent, the National Statistics Institute said in Santiago. That’s the most since January 2006. Industrial production shrank 17 percent after the 8.8-magnitude Feb. 27 earthquake and its accompanying tsunami, which caused damage worth more than a sixth of Chile’s gross domestic product.

Chile and Colombia are my two favorite South American countries. Both are led by conservative business-friendly economists. Chile’s president Sebastián Piñerahas a Masters and a Ph.D in economics from Harvard, and is successful in the private sector. The Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos specializes in business and economics, with graduate degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics.

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FBI investigating public school teacher for supporting terrorism

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From the radically leftist Minneapolis Star Tribune. (H/T Verum Serum via Power Line)

Excerpt:

The homes of five Twin Cities activists, including three prominent leaders of the Twin Cities antiwar movement, were raided Friday by the FBI in what an agency spokesman described as an “investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” The office of an antiwar organization also was reportedly raided…

Among the homes raided were the apartments of Jessica Sundin, who was a principal leader of the mass antiwar march of 10,000 on the opening day of the Republican National Convention two years ago, and Mick Kelly, who was prominent in that protest and among those who announced plans to march on the Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis, if the city is selected to host it in 2012. Neither has been arrested.

A raid was also conducted on the home of Meredith Aby, another local antiwar leader who was frequently the spokeswoman for the march on the GOP convention.

But Morgen at Verum Serum has a lot more.

Excerpt:

The other thing I wanted to point out, which is really the headline here, is that Meredith Aby, the activist named in the last paragraph above, is actually a public high school teacher in Bloomington, MN. Her official school web site is here (and another one here). Not surprisingly she is a social studies teacher.

Aby is apparently a long-time leader of the anti-war movement in Minnesota, with her activism centered around an organization called the Anti-War Committee. While I think most people would agree that this alone should not preclude her from teaching young people, I think it does raise legitimate concerns about her objectivity. Especially given that the courses she teaches include US Government, Civics, and World History.

More troubling, Aby is apparently also quite active in promoting her political beliefs, which lean about as far left as you can get. She is a frequent contributor on Fight Back! News, the media arm of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and has been a speaker at numerous events organized by other overtly socialist groups, including the new incarnation of the SDS (Bill Ayers’ old group).

In short, she’s a commie. And unless Minnesota is more “progressive” than I realize, I can’t imagine there are very many parents who would be comfortable with her teaching their children about world history and political philosophy.

Here’s a little bit about her from one of her web sites:

Meredith Aby grew up in Worthington, Minnesota (the turkey capital of the world!). She graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota with a degree in history, women’s studies, and Spanish. She is the head debate coach at Jefferson and has coached speech at Jefferson and at Kennedy. Aby teaches debate, philosophy, civics, world history, U.S. government, and AP U.S. government. She has been teaching in Bloomington Public Schools since 1997 and is the proud mother of the cutest baby in the world!

No mention of a husband there.

Can you imagine entrusting your children to a left-wing radical like this? And letting her have the power of grading them based on their agreement and compliance with her value system? Yet we have to fund these government schools whether we like it or not – they’re paid for with taxpayer money.

News

Is Colombia or Mexico better at dealing with criminal gangs?

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Colombian soldiers strike against FARC

Here’s a good story from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Colombia’s army blew away the field marshal of FARC’s narco-terror war Wednesday, showing with a jolt that to win, it’s terrorists who must “absorb” attacks, not innocents. Mexico and the U.S. have much to learn.

Seems the adage that Colombia is the only country where guerrillas die of old age isn’t true anymore.

On Thursday, Colombia celebrated news of the demise of Jorge Briceno, military commander and second-highest chief of FARC. The 57-year-old terrorist went down in a hail of bombs and gunfire over three days in a jungle bunker near La Macarena.

The Colombian army suffered no deaths and left at least 20 guerrillas dead on the jungle floor. Briceno’s demise marks the fourth knockout of FARC’s seven-man “Politburo”since 2008.

“This is the most crushing blow against the FARC in its entire history,” said Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, speaking from the sidelines at the United Nations in New York.

[…]Colombia’s war is in reality the southern flank of the same war that Mexico is fighting with its cartels — and that war is spilling over into the U.S. This is why Americans must pay attention.

The growing lawlessness on our border encompasses drugs, but also alien smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting and other acts of organized crime, with ties to global terror.

In Colombia’s case, it brooks no talk about “absorbing” terror attacks, as President Obama recently suggested in the U.S. If anything, Colombia seems to have taken lessons from Gen. David Petraeus’ surge in Iraq that took the war to the terrorists — and made sure they were the ones to worry about “absorbing” the attacks.

FARC is a left-wing Marxist terrorist group that traffics in cocaine. Hmmm. Cocaine? Terrorism? Marxism? That reminds me of someone. Who could it be?

Do you know what we should do to help Colombia defeat the Marxist-terrorist-drug cartel? We should sign a free trade deal so they can buy our stuff and we can buy their stuff. That will help them to grow more prosperous, and we’ll be more prosperous too! In fact, Canada has already done that. Canada likes Colombia. That’s why they signed a free trade agreement with Colombia. But the Democrats don’t like Colombia. Obama and the Democrats have delayed the signing of a free trade agreement with Colombia since they came into office.