A Couple of Brief Notes Around the Hemisphere

Boz pokes a hole here in facile attempts to categorize someone's politics.

Adam Isacson, in this post, illustrates why, despite their revolutionary rhetoric, the FARC may be President Uribe's biggest fans.

On the subject of the FARC in that same post, Adam captures succinctly, why, if anyone on the left really supports the FARC (and I do not know of anyone), they should be ashamed of themselves:

Could it be, then, that perhaps the FARC actually wants Uribe to win? Could their goal be to, in Marxist terminology, “sharpen the contradictions” by ensuring that the regime is ruled by the most nakedly plutocratic, militaristic president possible? Do the FARC secretly prefer a president who will concentrate wealth while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses, thus (they hope) winning new converts to the guerrilla cause?

Whatever the reason, to most Colombian voters the guerrilla strategy looks like mindless nihilism, likely fueled by the imperatives of the drug economy. Worse, it distracts from several very real issues that work strongly against Uribe in this election: the growing power of supposedly demobilized paramilitaries, the disastrous results of demobilizations so far, a big and growing narco-paramilitary-corruption scandal in the presidency’s secret police (DAS), the persistence of the drug trade, an unpopular free-trade agreement, and perceived government neglect of non-military needs.

These issues, among others, should be at the heart of Colombia’s national debate as the presidential elections draw nearer. Instead, the voting public is being distracted by the FARC, who have bizarrely chosen to affect voter preferences by repeatedly attacking some of the poorest, most marginalized Colombians. [my emphasis]

I think, by the way, the first paragraph describes exactly what the FARC want to do. They just don't care if they make the country ungovernable in the process, nor do they care how many lives they ruin.

Comments

[Akaky]

Randy, this is standard guerilla warfare. Michael Collins reduced Ireland to chaos in 1919-1921 and did so deliberately, telling one IRA bigwig that the sooner the country was made ungovernable, the better it would be for Sinn Fein and the IRA. The Mau Mau, the Irgun, EOKA, the Viet Minh and the Viet Cong, and any number of other groups have used the same strategy. Zarqawi is trying to do the same thing with the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq as we speak. The guerillas, having no stake in the current social or political order, can destroy their society with complete ruthlessness, knowing that they whatever was lost with structures of their own after they win, provided, of course, that they win.