CounterVortex

JOHN McCAIN’S PASTORS

Nuclear War, Ethnic Cleansing and Media Double Standards

by Michael I. Niman

In another Fox News agenda-setting moment, the GOP’s propaganda wing has successfully shifted the election focus away from our endless wars and our imploding economy and environment, over to Barack Obama’s pastor. It started with Fox—playing what sometimes seemed like an endless loop of context-free snippets from some of the fieriest sermons ever uttered by the pastor at Obama’s Chicago church. In what is now a well-worn pattern, GOP-talking-points-turned-Fox-News-stories quickly migrated to the Fox Lite networks and the nation’s leading newspapers. Lost amid the newfound obsession with Obama’s pastor and the black church in general was any mention of John McCain’s two lunatic preachers.

Our coming nuclear war
First there’s Pastor John Hagee, who runs an arena-sized megachurch in San Antonio, Texas. Hagee preaches that Muslims—that’s all Muslims—have a “scriptural mandate” to kill Christians and Jews. But don’t worry. America, according to Hagee, is on top of this coming showdown with Islam. He predicts, and seems to pine for, an all-out nuclear war with Iran, as the beginning of a new global war. Writing for the evangelical Pentecostal magazine Charisma, Hagee argues that “The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty.” In his 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, he expanded the first theater of operations for his coming world war to include Russia. This nuclear war, according to Hagee, would eventually end with the second coming of Christ and the whisking away of true believers to the heavens.

Obama-bashers no doubt are currently sorting through parking tickets and assorted databases to determine if he was present for his pastor’s more controversial sermons—with the ultimate story-line centering on why he didn’t shout his preacher down or pelt the man mid-sermon with his prayer book. On the invisible McCain front, however, there’s no question about whether McCain was present for and aware of Hagee’s most lunatic remarks. McCain was onstage with Hagee, receiving his endorsement for president, when he ranted about Allah not being “our” god, warning that “without victory [in Iraq and perhaps Iran], there is no survival.” Rather then flee the stage and quickly call a news conference to distance himself from the end-timer, McCain went over and clasped Hagee’s hand for a photo op.

In declaring his support for McCain, Hagee cited McCain’s aggressive attitude toward Iran—a country McCain actually sang for the cameras about bombing. Are you worried yet?

Drowned sinners and great whores
Hagee is not controversial solely because of his psychotic lust for an apocalyptic nuclear war. Hagee refers to the Catholic Church as “The Great Whore of Revelation 17,” as well as a “False cult system,” an “apostate church” and, like Islam, an anti-Christ institution.

The levees protecting New Orleans failed, according to Hagee, not because the federal government diverted maintenance funding to pay for the Iraq war, as alleged by an Army Corps of Engineers whistle-blower, or because the levees are poorly engineered and under-constructed. No. They failed because “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” and hence the dead in New Orleans, a group primarily made up of impoverished elderly, infirm and handicapped victims of a rescue plan that was indifferent to their survival, “were the recipients of the judgment of God.”

The fact that Hagee’s god chose to punish New Orleans for its supposed sins by drowning, starving, dehydrating and denying medicine to a group of overwhelmingly black victims should be no surprise to Hagee-watchers. In 1996 Hagee made news by organizing a mock “slave sale” to raise funds for his Cornerstone church. His promotional materials for the event included, the San Antonio Express-News reported at the time, taglines promising that “slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and advising auction attendees to “make plans to come and go home with a slave.”

To date, McCain has yet to condemn, distance himself from or repute the endorsement of Pastor Hagee when confronted with this information. His official line has been that, while he doesn’t agree with everything Hagee says, he still insists that “all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.”

So tell me again, in case I missed the point—what were the supposedly controversial blasphemies that Obama’s preacher uttered?

Our coming divine war
Then there’s Ohio-based televangelist Rod Parsley, whom McCain identifies as a spiritual advisor. According to Parsley, who recently appeared side by side with McCain at a campaign rally, America’s “divine purpose” is to destroy Islam. In his 2005 book, Silent No More, McCain’s spiritual advisor claims that this country “was founded, in part, with
the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.”

Parsley’s argument is based on the historically accurate fact that Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) in 1492 declared that the purpose of his exploration was to find enough gold to fund a Christian reconquest of Jerusalem. Colón, however, did not found this country, nor any currently existing political entity in the Americas. The continuing celebration of Columbus, however, lays the foundation for hate-mongers like McCain’s pastor to claim that our national heritage is based in hate.

The real problem, however, is not Parsley’s interpretation of history. It’s his apocalyptic vision for a short-lived future.

Ethnic Cleansing USA
When McCain’s spiritual advisor talks about war with Islam, he’s not just talking, like Hagee, about a nuclear showdown abroad. He wants the war to begin here at home. Parsley complains about the growing number of Muslims in the United States (he claims 34,000 converts since 9-11) and the number of mosques in this country (he clams “some 1,209”) as evidence that we are failing in our historic calling as a “Christian nation” and “a bastion against Islam.”

While Hagee calls for a religious war to end the world, Parsley seems to have added to the agenda the desire to first destroy everything this country stands for along the way. The spiritual advice here is to make us squirm in pain watching the destruction of our shaky experiment in pluralistic democracy, with massive Yugoslavian-style ethnic cleansing of Muslims—then to bring on the end of the world as a grand finale.

So, one more time, please remind me what Obama’s pastor said in his sermons. And tell me, one more time, why I should be more concerned with Obama’s pastor than with John McCain’s two theological confidantes?

Hillary’s prayer cabal
The story doesn’t end with McCain. While we were all watching YouTube cliplets of Obama’s pastor, the press also continued to ignore Hillary Clinton’s troubling religious cell. The Nation last week ran a book review by Barbara Ehrenreich, about Jeff Sharlet’s forthcoming (to be released in May) book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Sharlet, in conducting research for his book, went to live in a group home run by a Washington, DC-based religious group, the Fellowship (known more informally as the Family), which Hillary Clinton joined as First Lady in 1993.

As senator, Clinton is now among the group’s leaders. While the group’s religious calling is unclear, its political leanings are horrifically clear. Former and current members include former Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, Indonesian dictator General Suharto, Salvadoran general and convicted mass torturer Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova and
Honduran general and death squad commander Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, as well as American politicos such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese and Rick Santorum. This is a disturbing bunch of bedfellows for sure—regardless of their religious beliefs. Connect the dots. It ain’t pretty.

So, for the last time, because I clearly miss the point—why should I worry about Barack Obama or his pastor?

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Dr. Michael I. Niman is a professor of journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College. His previous columns are available at ArtVoice.com, archived at MediaStudy.com and available globally through syndication.

This story first appeared in the March 27 edition of ArtVoice, Buffalo, NY

RESOURCES

Will McCain Specifically ‘Repudiate’ Hagee Slavery Auction and Anti-Gay Statements?
African American Political Pundit, March 17
http://aapoliticalpundit.blogspot.com/2008/03/will-mccain-specifically-repudiate.html

Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara’s Blog, March 19
http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/03/hillarys-nasty.html

From World War 4 Report’s John McCain watch:

Saudi Arabia prepares for nuclear contamination
WW4 Report, March 26, 2008
/node/5299

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THE AUDACITY OF VAGUENESS

Barack Obama and Latin America

by Nikolas Kozloff, Council on Hemispheric Affairs

As the US presidential campaign heats up, Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, has not been very eager to comprehensively address Latin America as an issue. In recent years, the region has undergone a major tectonic shift towards the left, surely prompting many to wonder how the young Illinois Senator might deal with progressive change throughout the hemisphere were he elected to the White House.

Would he seek to continue the rabidly hawkish stance of the Bush administration towards such nations as Venezuela, or could he be convinced to broker a rapprochement? Given his statements to date, it’s unlikely that Obama would be as militaristic or confrontational as McCain. However, Obama’s vagueness is a little troubling, and unfortunately a compliant press corps has failed to aggressively pressure him to state his positions more clearly. Oddly, Obama doesn’t even mention Latin America on his campaign website.

Colombia: Some Cautious First Steps
Though you wouldn’t know it from watching TV news or reading most newspapers, the Colombian civil conflict continues even today, and the US government still funnels billions of dollars in military aid to the right-wing regime of Álvaro Uribe. The policy is a complete and total misuse of US taxpayer funds, not to mention a means of support for human rights abuses in that unfortunate Andean nation.

What does Obama have to say about this serious matter? He has stated that the flow of drugs from Colombia should be reduced, and has questioned President Bush’s close alliance with the Uribe administration (which has been tied to right-wing paramilitary death squads). In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Obama wrote that he was concerned about the links between the Colombian government and paramilitaries.

“The problem,” Obama wrote, “is compounded by the Colombian government’s questionable implementation of the paramilitary demobilizations.” To his credit, Obama took a strong stance in his letter advocating the dismantling of paramilitary networks. The government, Obama argued, should undertake measures such as investigating and sanctioning paramilitaries’ financial backers and accomplices in both the government and the military, regardless of their rank. If the Uribe regime did not take more effective action, Obama warned, then “maintaining current levels of assistance will be difficult to justify.”

When push came to shove, however, Obama failed to join his liberal colleague Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in pressuring the Colombian government to address these problems. In July 2005, Feingold, as well as Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), called on Rice not to certify that Colombia met human rights conditions until greater progress was made on a series of issues. Where was Obama? Unfortunately, the Senator failed to sign the letter.

On the other hand, Obama did join Dodd and Leahy in criticizing Nicholas Burns, the outgoing undersecretary of state for political affairs, who played down the Colombian problem on the pages of the Miami Herald. The Illinois legislator also gave his support to a letter signed by Dodd and Leahy and addressed to Uribe. In it, the senators expressed concern over public statements by some government officials, including President Uribe, which have led to attacks against human rights activists, journalists, and other members of civil society. “A more peaceful, just, and stable Colombia is undoubtedly in our national interest,” Obama has remarked.

Those are surely compelling words, but Obama’s critics may very well be right when they accuse Obama of not offering tangible solutions. Colombia’s problems are rooted in historic and social inequities, and the unequal distribution of land. The War on Drugs prosecuted by Washington and Bogotá has exacerbated such tensions.

How does Obama intend to resolve the intractable civil conflict in Colombia? Would he continue the counterproductive War on Drugs for an indefinite period, even though it has proven tremendously costly in human terms? The Illinois Senator needs to do more than simply offer up polite and diplomatic protestations to the Bush White House and must come up with a plan of his own.

From Bush to Obama
All of this is not meant to suggest that Obama would be incapable of articulating a more creative foreign policy in the region. To his credit once again, Obama praised Latin American countries for carrying out recent elections which have brought left-leaning governments to power. “In many ways,” Obama noted in a March 2007 speech, “these election results symbolize the important political, economic, and social changes occurring throughout the Americas. As many have noted, the elections gave voice to a yearning across the hemisphere for social and economic development—a yearning among tens of millions of people for a better life.”

In contrast to John McCain, who excoriates the rise of leftist regimes such as those of Chávez and Evo Morales in Bolivia, Obama views some of these political developments in Latin America positively. Though he did not state the names of individual regimes in his speech, Obama remarked that recent electoral trends in Latin America were a “welcome development.” In a jab perhaps aimed at the Bush administration’s interventionist regional foreign policy, Obama added a new twist: “Too often, change in the Americas has occurred in an anti-democratic fashion. Those days must permanently be put to rest.”

Continuing to lash out at the President, Obama noted that “our [United States’] standing in the Americas has suffered as a result of the misguided policies and actions of the Bush Administration. It will take significant work to repair the damage wrought by six years of neglect and mismanagement of relations.”

On a high note, Obama added that, “If we pay careful attention to developments throughout the region, and respond to them in a thoughtful and respectful way, then we can advance our many and varied national interests at stake in the Americas.” Moreover, Obama hit Bush hard for neglecting Latin America and failing to deliver much-needed economic aid. Obama remarked that with the exception of HIV/AIDS funding, Bush has slashed assistance for both economic development and health programs in the Americas. In contrast, Obama pledged to help alleviate poverty in the region, an initiative “which is in our interests, just as it is in accord with our values.”

Obama and Afro-Latinos
Though Obama has not focused on Latin America nearly as much as some of his Senate colleagues, such as Patrick Leahy, have urged him to do, the Illinois lawmaker has taken a long-standing interest in the plight of Afro-Latinos. Early in his Senate career, Obama declared that “From Colombia to Brazil to the Dominican Republic to Ecuador, persons of African descent continue to experience racial discrimination and remain among the poorest and most marginalized groups in the entire region. While recent positive steps have been taken in some areas—for example, giving land titles to Afro-Colombians and passing explicit anti-discrimination legislation in Brazil—much work still needs to be done to ensure that this is the beginning of an ongoing process of reform, not the end.”

Obama noted that Afro-Latinos were more likely to become refugees or victims of violence within areas of conflict in their own countries. Obama went on to detail the many problems faced by Afro-Latinos, such as a lack of access to health services and a high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Moreover, Obama added that Afro-Latinos were subject to far greater rates of aggression from local police forces than are generally perceived.

Obama lamented the fact that in the previous Senate, there was not one mention of the millions of Afro-Latinos who continued to experience widespread discrimination and socioeconomic marginalization. “Emerging civil society groups are growing stronger throughout many countries in Latin America, and this growth should be encouraged as it presents important opportunities for partnerships and collaboration,” Obama said.

In another speech, Obama spoke eloquently on the subject of Afro-Latinos. “In the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” he said, “our own country is being awakened to a great divide in our midst. As we struggle with troubling intersections of race and class, and how we have failed the most vulnerable members of our population, I hope we will be able to take a moment to reflect on similar struggles in places such as Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela.”

Obama has praised the Uribe government for creating a cabinet-level position on Afro-Colombian issues and appointing an Afro-Colombian to fill the post. He noted the political importance and symbolism of the move: Afro-Colombians have long been subject to racial and economic discrimination in the country.

“It is my hope that this will encourage other governments in Latin America to consider taking additional measures to address racial discrimination,” Obama said, “as well as economic and social marginalization, faced by Afro-descendants in their countries.”

However, as the Senator is surely aware, the Chávez government has made great strides in addressing the plight of Afro-Venezuelans, while Uribe only began to confront this problem recently. Chávez, for example, has created a special commission to address racism in Venezuelan society—and has seen fit to include a special provision in his constitution that protects the rights of Afro-Venezuelans and indigenous peoples. In Barlovento, a coastal region populated mainly by Afro-Venezuelans, one can vividly witness the degree to which the poor have benefited from the government’s health and education programs.

Chávez: The Political Hot Potato
While praising Colombia, a controversial US ally, for its positive steps to address the racial divide, Obama is wrong to show such caution when it comes to Venezuela. Chávez has done far more to help people of African descent than Uribe, but the Senator hasn’t singled out the Venezuelan leader for his excellent track record. That’s not surprising given the virulently anti-Chávez mood in Washington on both sides of the party divide, but it raises questions about Obama’s level of sophistication regarding political developments in Venezuela, not to mention his strategy for dealing with Chávez. What does Obama think about the National Endowment for Democracy, for example, and the US role in the April 2002 coup? Would Obama seek to fundamentally reorient US policy and end its prejudicial support for anti-Chávez groups in the country?

Obama’s foreign policy advisers, such as Samantha Power, have been frustratingly (and some might say infuriatingly) vague as to what Obama’s policy might be. When Power was specifically asked on “Democracy Now!” to elaborate on Obama’s views about Chávez, she only said that her candidate would engage with the Venezuelan leader “in a more intelligent way.”

Obama, claimed Power, was very aware of the troubled history between the United States and Latin America, as well as the latter’s “suspicion of US motives.” Obama, she added, would respect both the right to self-determination and the dignity of Latin American countries. On the other hand, Power said that she found Chávez “problematic” on the issue of human rights. If this is truly her point of view, she risks being on the wrong side of the debate, because Chávez’s human rights record compares favorably with most of his hemispheric counterparts.

In his public statements, Obama hasn’t cleared up his fundamental problem of vagueness regarding Chávez. Speaking with his supporters, Obama said Chávez had “despotic tendencies” and was using oil money to fan anti-Americanism. The Illinois Senator did, however, stir ripples when he declared in a CNN-YouTube debate that he would open diplomatic channels to “rogue nations” such as Venezuela. Though certainly mild, Obama’s remark quickly embroiled him in a political firestorm with his chief rival, Hillary Clinton, who labeled him as “naïve.”

In the current political milieu, Obama deserves some praise for going out on a limb in the debate. Although he is still short on specifics, Obama has at least opened up a space for dialogue on both Venezuela and the relationship between the United States and newly emerging left-leaning regimes throughout the region. He’s still a relatively unknown on foreign policy but at least he hasn’t staked out a hawkish stand like John McCain—a politician who would surely continue the Bush legacy by antagonizing, bullying, and pushing around smaller, poorer countries who don’t go along with Washington’s traditional agenda.

From NAFTA to CAFTA
In the wake of John Edwards’ departure from the presidential race, Senator Obama and Clinton have been struggling to floor each other with anti-NAFTA rhetoric. Edwards had been a leading critic of corporate free trade on the campaign trail and Obama now seeks to capture the former North Carolina senator’s backing by sounding a more populist note. “Our diplomacy with Mexico must aim to amend NAFTA,” Obama has said. “I will seek enforceable labor and environment standards—not unenforceable side agreements that have done little to curb NAFTA’s failures.”

But Obama doesn’t stop there.

“To reduce illegal immigration,” Obama says, “we also have to help Mexico develop its own economy, so that more Mexicans can live their dreams south of the border. That’s why I’ll increase foreign assistance, including expanded micro-financing for businesses in Mexico.”

That kind of rhetoric is right on the money. For far too long, progressives have failed to prevent the right from hijacking issues such as NAFTA and trade. Media pundits like CNN’s Lou Dobbs rail against NAFTA, but typically from a nationalist, xenophobic perspective. Obama has taken a more principled stand, and makes the obvious point that migration has been fueled by dire poverty.

Obama also has spoken out in favor of several corporate-friendly free trade agreements. Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 2005, he declared that the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) did little to protect US labor and was bad for the environment in Central American. “So far, almost all of our energy and almost all of these trade agreements are about making life easier for the winners of globalization, while we do nothing as life gets harder for American workers…Our failure to respond to globalization is causing a race to the bottom that means lower wages and stingier health and retiree benefits for all Americans.”

To his credit, Obama voted “no” on CAFTA. Some of the other main players in the current election cycle, notably Clinton and McCain, voted “yes,” thus guaranteeing CAFTA’s passage.

Campaigning in Iowa, Obama continued to harp on the issue of unfair trade agreements. Speaking to the United Auto Workers, he pledged to fight initiatives such as CAFTA in future. “We’re not going to stop globalization in its tracks, but we shouldn’t be standing idly by while American jobs are shipped overseas,” the Illinois Senator remarked. “It’s time to put Main Street ahead of Wall Street when it comes to trade. The only trade agreements I believe in are ones that put workers first–because trade deals aren’t good for the American people if they aren’t good for working people. That’s why I opposed CAFTA.”

Concern over Colombia
On the pending Colombia free trade measure, Obama should be lauded for his position. He emphatically opposes the pending free trade deal with the Andean nation that the Bush White House so aggressively backs. Obama states that “I’m concerned frankly about the reports there of the involvement of the administration with human rights violations and the suppression of workers.”

According to an analysis by the American Friends Service Committee, Colombia will have to reduce tariff barriers for most imports under the agreement, as well as agree to new rules on intellectual property, government purchasing, investment, labor and environmental protection among others. “The twenty-three percent of Colombia’s population employed in agriculture could be displaced by competition with strict subsidies [on] US imports and some may turn to coca production or affiliate with armed groups rather than migrate,” notes the organization.

Critics say that Obama is justified in his reluctance to consent to the Colombia agreement. Bogotá has done its utmost to ram the agreement home with a minimum of democratic participation. Once Nasa Indians, from the southwestern Colombian department of Cauca, organized a referendum on the free trade agreement that mobilized 51,330 voters out of a total of 68,448 registered voters (signifying that 98% voting against the free trade agreement); President Uribe declared that there were “dark forces of terrorism” organizing such plebiscites and accused indigenous peoples of being ignorant on matters pertaining to trade.

What’s more, in an effort to prepare itself for the negotiation and implementation of the free trade agreement, Bogotá is “reforming” its constitution. Because of US demands that local laws be changed to facilitate the implementation of the new trade agreement, Uribe has seen fit to change the country’s laws to create a more secure investment environment. However, in order to do this Uribe has eroded inalienable constitutional rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

In addition, the free trade agreement would do little to protect domestic workers. Colombia is one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a trade unionist. Most Colombian trade unionist murders are committed by paramilitaries with links to the Colombian military. More than 800 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia over the past six years, with such killings rarely being solved.

To his credit, Obama recognizes the need to rethink the nature of trade agreements. “I think it is very important for us in our free trade agreements with any country to ensure that basic human rights are being observed, basic worker rights are being observed, basic environmental rights are being observed,” he has remarked.

Obama’s Puzzling Peru Position
Given Obama’s consistently critical stance on Latin American free trade deals, his position on trade with Peru is puzzling. Despite the fact that a majority of House Democrats, 12 of 18 House committee chairs and every Democratic presidential candidate opposed the Peru NAFTA expansion (except for Clinton), Obama publicly backed the measure (though he did not cast a vote on the Senate floor). The deal, which passed the House by a vote of 285 to 132 and the Senate by a vote of 77 to 18, eliminates tariffs and sets rules of investment between the world’s largest economy and the Andean nation.

But the measure only came to a vote after Democrats were able to persuade the Bush administration to toughen labor and environmental provisions. Trade between the US and Peru, which totaled $8.8 billion in 2006, is now scheduled to increase by $1.5 billion once the accord is implemented. Peru will ship more asparagus and apparel, while American producers export more meat and grain.

The agreement proved contentious in Peru, as it was strong-armed through the Peruvian legislature. In April 2006, the National Electoral Council of Peru received a petition with nearly 60,000 signatures submitted requesting a referendum on the pact. However, when elections two months later handed anti-free trade parties a legislative majority, the outgoing Congress decided to ignore the petition. Despite widespread calls for a re-vote by the newly elected legislature, the lame-duck Congress approved the agreement.

Last month, Peruvian farmers went on a national strike against the deal. Fearful that the US would flood the Peruvian market with subsidized rice imports, thus spelling disaster for the area’s producers, local activists blocked roads in protest of the agreement. The government then declared a state of emergency and sent in security forces. Four farmers were killed in the ensuing violence.

Obama said that he supported the agreement because it contained improved labor standards. But the Senator’s comments do not withstand close scrutiny: it is by no means clear that the Bush administration will act to enforce new provisions within the agreement guaranteeing greater workers’ rights. Some Democrats also claim that the new trade agreements will cost US workers jobs as cheaper products from other nations drive American companies offshore or out of business. In the early stages of the presidential race, John Edwards stumped against the Peru pact, and prominent unions such as The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Association of Machinists, and United Brotherhood of Carpenters have campaigned against it as well.

Labor unions, however, say that changing regulations regarding the workplace and the environment do not make up for outsourcing manufacturing jobs. “This deal was not a good deal for workers and should never have been put forward,” Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said. “I hope that the Democratic leadership tells the Bush administration that Congress will now focus on job-creating trade policies and no more of these job-killing agreements.”

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, had nothing but withering scorn for Obama on the Peru vote. In a recent press release, it stated, “The fact that Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to announce his support for the Peru NAFTA expansion…makes his recent attacks on Clinton regarding NAFTA bizarre.” Overall, even though not one US labor, environmental, Latino, consumer, faith or family farm group supported the Peru free trade agreement, a majority of Senate Democrats such as Obama “broke with their base, dismissed widespread public opposition to more-of-the-same trade policy and joined Republicans to deliver another Bush NAFTA expansion to the large corporations pushing this deal.”

Nevertheless, it should be recognized that Obama has been right on three out of four Latin American free trade deals. Many of his supporters fervently believe that his Peru stance will prove the exception rather than the rule and that he will push for a progressive trade policy if he is elected President.

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Nikolas Kozloff is a Senior Research Fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) and the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2008)

RESOURCES

Latin America and the US Presidential Campaign:
Nikolas Kozloff on John McCain
http://www.coha.org/2008/02/28/latin-america-and-the-us-presidential-campaign-nikolas-kosloff-on-john-mccain/

Public Citizen statement on passage of Peru FTA, Dec. 4, 2007
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2007/12/senate-dems-joi.html

AFSC statement on Colombia FTA, February 2006
http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/trade-agreements/Colombia.htm

Plan Colombia: Stunning recovery warrants continued US support
by R. Nicholas Burns, Miami Herald, April 26
Online at the Colombia Presidency website
http://www.presidencia.gov.co/Ingles/mundo/usa/2006/abril/26.htm

From our daily report:

Peru: five killed in trade protests
WW4 Report, Feb. 26, 2008
/node/5154

New Yorkers confront Colombian trade minister on FTA
WW4 Report, March 10, 2008
/node/5240

Peru trade pact enacted; Uruguay holds out
WW4 Report, Dec. 26, 2007
/node/4860

From World War 4 Report’s Obama Watch:

White House bashes China torture, vetoes bill banning torture
WW4 Report, March 12, 2008
/node/5247

——————-

Special to World War 4 Report, April 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THE U.S. THREAT TO MEXICAN NATIONAL SECURITY

Narco Gangs Armed by Gringos—Despite Border Militarization

by Bill Weinberg, NACLA Report on the Americas

Shipping powders back and forth
Black goes south and white comes north.
—”Throwing Stones,” John Perry Barlow for the Grateful Dead, 1982

The violent struggle between Mexican drug cartels for supremacy over the multibillion-dollar narcotics trade is starting to look like a real war. With local police outgunned, President Felipe Calderón began his term in the final days of 2006 by deploying the army to fight the cartels.

The violence, simmering for more than a decade, exploded in 2003 in Nuevo Laredo, a crucial crossing point to Interstate 35, when Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cárdenas was apprehended. Seeing a strategic vulnerability, the rival Juárez and Tijuana cartels started moving into Nuevo Laredo, traditionally a Gulf Cartel stronghold. The Zetas—the Gulf Cartel’s paramilitary force, thought to be composed of former military personnel—began a reign of terror to protect their turf. Several Nuevo Laredo police officers were killed by presumed Zeta assassins in the opening months of 2005, prompting then president Vicente Fox to flood the town with 700 federal agents and army troops in what he dubbed “the mother of all battles” on the drug trade.

Yet the Mexican state’s armed response has done little to solve the problem. In 2007, drug-related killings surpassed 2,500, up from 2,100 in 2006.

A crucial part of the problem lies in the cartels’ firepower, which now rivals even that of the regular Mexican army. Both the cartels and the Mexican state get their arms from the United States. During the Fox administration, an astonishing 2,000 guns entered Mexico every day, overwhelmingly from across the northern border, according to official Mexican estimates. This “iron river” of guns, as it has been called, has swollen since the US Congress allowed the federal ban on assault weapons to expire in 2004. Mexican authorities confiscated an unprecedented 10,579 smuggled weapons in 2005, and they say 90% of them come from the United States.

“The arms the narcos use are the most sophisticated that you can imagine,” says Luz Maria González Armenta, leader of the Civil Association for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights–Emiliano Zapata (DEPRODHEZAC), which has been monitoring violence from the often overlapping narco gangs and police alike in Matamoros since 1994. “The 9mm cuerno de chivo, or AK-47, continues to predominate. But they use fragmentation grenades, shotguns, grenade launchers.” Spectacular shoot-outs in the border city, which is the nerve-center of the powerful Gulf Cartel, sometimes makes headlines—but discrete executions are more common, González says. “Bodies are frequently found with signs of torture and the famous tiro de gracia,” or final death shot.

And she has no doubts about where the weaponry originates. “Considering that Mexico is a country that does not produce arms, and yet the narcos have access to arms far superior to those used by the police forces, we presume these arms come from the United States,” she says. “It is very close, and with the corruption in customs an elephant could pass undetected.”

The arms intercepted on the border are likely a small fraction of those that make it through. In December, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) raided a Phoenix storage locker and seized 42 weapons, including AK-47s and Belgian FN handguns; just weeks earlier, BATF agents in Phoenix had seized more than 60 AK-47s, other assault rifles, handguns, and an Uzi. In both cases, bureau agents said most of the weapons were purchased at gun shows and were bound for Mexico.

Seizures across the border have been even more dramatic. In August, a single raid at the Nogales crossing yielded 163 weapons, and in February 2007 the Mexican army seized a tractor-trailer loaded with some 20 M-16s, M-4 carbines, and grenade launchers—along with an armored pickup truck—in Matamoros. A federal agent involved in the raid was killed the following day by AK fire.

A new AK-47s sells for less than $1,000 in Mexico, and an AR-15 starts at $825. According to a 2005 government estimate, US guns are recovered in 80 percent of crimes in Mexico.

In a strange case of role reversal, Mexican officials are increasingly taking the United States to task for failing to stop the guns from entering their national territory—echoing their counterparts in Washington, with their continual criticism of Mexico over the northward flow of drugs. In his first published interview with the foreign press after becoming Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón told the Financial Times: “The United States is jointly responsible for what is happening to us… In that joint responsibility the US government has a lot of work to do. We cannot confront this problem alone.” Mexican Prosecutor General Eduardo Medina Mora put it succinctly: “We have done our part; we hope the United States will do its part.” Medina added that about $10 billion in drug cash flows south each year, and that gun stores in border states sell twice as many weapons as outlets elsewhere in the United States.

Mexico’s assistant secretary of Public Safety Patricio Patiño told the AP last May: “The firepower we are seeing here has to do with a lack of control on that [the US] side of the border.” In an interview with Reuters, Gen. Javier del Real Magallanes, head of army drug operations for northeastern Mexico, said: “If there are no weapons, there’s no violence. These arms aren’t from Mexico; they’re from the other side.” He added that more surveillance and detection equipment was necessary, but would not be sufficient. “We also need the United States to do what it should with respect to arms trafficking… We have to put a brake on the sale of arms.”

In September 2006, Mexico’s “drug czar”—head of the National Institute to Combat Drugs— Santiago Vasconcelos also argued the US government was failing to stop the flow of illegal weapons. “There’s a huge black market in weapons in the United States that they have to control,” he said. “If they closed that, the traffickers would be hitting each other with stones instead of bazookas.”

Just how will the U.S. government “do its part”? The answer is to be found in the Mérida Initiative, a multi-million-dollar military aid package now being considered in Congress.

The NRA and Arms Deregulation
Last June, the Calderón government formally requested military aid from the US Congress, saying such assistance was necessary to defeat the cartels. The request was made at the US-Mexico Inter-Parliamentary Meeting held in Austin and was revealed to the Mexican daily La Jornada by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), leader of the House Intelligence Committee. The request came under the rubric of a Mérida Initiative, named after the Mexican city where the presidents of Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States held meetings in March 2007, at which the idea was first discussed. The initiative, which would provide $550 million to Mexico and Central America, was criticized by US representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Tom Lantos (D-CA) because Congress had not been involved in—or even notified of—the proposal’s development.

The Bush administration calls the Mérida Initiative “a new paradigm” of bilateral cooperation in the war on drugs and terrorism, and says it will be but the “first tranche” of a $1.4 billion, multi-year “security cooperation package.” Some 40% of the funds are slated for new helicopters and surveillance aircraft for the Mexican army; $60 million is earmarked for the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR), Mexico’s justice department, to beef up forensic capabilities, digitize intelligence, and train federal police. About $30 million would go to Mexico’s National Migration Institute, for stepped-up enforcement on the southern border with Guatemala. A total of $50 million would go to the military and police forces of the Central American republics.

The Mérida Initiative includes a “Southwest Border Initiative,” which calls for greater cooperation between the BATF and Mexican authorities to interrupt arms smuggling. But some Washington policy-watchers doubt this will be effective as long as arms are so freely available north of the line.

“Because of how loose the gun laws are here, anyone can walk over, buy large quantities of arms, and go back and use them to kill a presidential candidate,” says Bill Hartung of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. (In fact, the .38 Special used in the 1994 assassination of candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in Tijuana was traced to a gun sale in Arizona.) “If we had some kind of gun control here, if we didn’t have these kitchen-table dealers, if there were limits on how many weapons you can have—it would prevent people from buying a lot of guns and bringing them in by the shopping bag to Mexico or Colombia.”

Hartung’s critical first step is closing the “gun show loophole.” While licensed dealers are required to check purchasers’ ID and to perform background checks, private sellers at gun shows are not subject to these requirements under federal law, allowing many purchasers to evade scrutiny. The question is left to the states, 17 of which have passed legislation closing the loophole. Among those that have not are the border states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

About 40% of US gun sales are in the “secondary gun market,” according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California–Davis. The secondary market thrives especially in Arizona and Texas, which Wintemute calls a “gunrunner’s paradise.” He notes three varieties of illegal sales at gun shows: In the first, the buyer is prohibited from purchasing—for instance, someone from out of state—”and the seller knows not to ask questions.” Second are “straw purchases,” in which a legitimate purchaser serves as a surrogate for someone barred from purchasing from a licensed dealer. In the third, “a licensed or unlicensed dealer knows sale is prohibited and turns a blind eye.”

Assault rifles like the AK-47 remain high on the Mexican cartels’ shopping list, despite the fact that any weapon more powerful than a hunting rifle is outlawed in Mexico for use outside the military or law enforcement. The sturdy AK-47, ironically designed by the Soviets as an asset to guerrilla forces in the third world, is today produced by several US companies, including Arsenal of Las Vegas and Armory USA of Houston. Arizona is a major producer of firearms. In 2004, 11 companies in that state produced more than 100,000 weapons, according to the most recent BATF data. Red Rock Arms of Mesa makes a variety of high-powered rifles; Bushmaster Firearms of Lake Havasu City produces AR-15 parts; Sturm, Ruger & Co. of Prescott manufactures pistols.

“In effect, we allow military-style weapons to be readily available,” says Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (and former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana). “They’ll check you out when you get on an airplane, but you can show up at a gun show and walk out with an AK-47.”

Helmke says the 1994 assault weapons ban was never even very effective. “Manufacturers found ways around some of the definitions,” he says. Under the law, a rifle had to have at least two of several listed features in order to be considered an “assault rifle”—such as bayonet mounts and flash guards. Nineteen makes of rifle were originally thusly defined, and banned for sale to civilians. “So new ones were designed which just dropped one of those features.”

Helmke wants new legislation that will close this loophole, and takes hope from some state laws. “When we talk to people in Congress, we ask them to follow the California model. It has a single-feature test, so it’s harder to get around.”

Meanwhile, Congress allowed the 1994 law to sunset when its ten years were up. “We haven’t had any type of assault weapons ban at the federal level in the last three years,” says Helmke. “As a result, we’re starting to see more assault weapons.”

He rattles off some examples from the recent spate of media-splashed massacres in the American heartland. “The kid in Omaha who shot up the mall was using an AK-47 that his stepfather left in his closet. The young person who shot up the Colorado churches had a Bushmaster. He bought it at a gun store and ordered ammo through the mail. The UPS outlet reported the large quantities of ammo to the police, but there weren’t any legal restrictions. If you have a high enough credit card limit, you could buy a thousand AK-47s tomorrow and all the ammo you wanted.”

Federal gun laws have followed a paradoxical trajectory, actually getting looser since the post-9-11 obsession with “security,” after generations of getting tighter. The first was the National Firearms Act in 1934, which required fully automatic weapons to be federally licensed, essentially barring them from civilians. The Gun Control Act of 1968, passed in the wake of that year’s political assassinations, set up prohibited purchases—including to convicted felons, the dangerously mentally ill, and “illegal aliens.” In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (named for White House press secretary Jim Brady, permanently disabled in the 1981 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan) instated a criminal background database—the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Then came the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which was allowed to sunset—just as the Patriot and Homeland Security acts were coming into force.

In December 2007, Congress passed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act in response to April’s Virginia Tech massacre. The law imposes a cut of federal law enforcement funding to states that do not turn records over to the NICS—but does not address the “gun show loophole.”

Wintemute says the BATF has abdicated its responsibility to crack down on gun smuggling, having been starved for funds by a pro-gun Congress and pressured to turn a blind eye. He points to a series of BATF stings at gun shows in Richmond, Virginia, in 2004 and 2005 that resulted in the confiscation of several firearms. Afterward, Wintemute says, the agency was “grilled” by Rep. James M. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) in hearings of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Perhaps most surprisingly, given the US government’s commitment to fighting the “war on terror,” the National Rifle Association has urged the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit people on terrorism watch lists from buying firearms. In an open letter to the Justice Department, NRA director Chris Cox said the bill “would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ‘suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.” Yet current law already denies sales to “illegal” immigrants—and the NRA has no problem with that.

This comes amid ominous signs of a resurgence of right-wing militia activity in the United States—this time in reaction to the supposed immigration crisis. In early May 2007, just as Cox issued his letter, the BATF announced the arrest of five members of an “Alabama Free Militia” in that state’s DeKalb County, and the seizure of 130 grenades, a grenade launcher, a machine gun, a short-barrel shotgun, and 2,500 rounds of ammunition. The men were denied bail after BATF agents said they had been planning attacks on Mexican immigrants.

The US gun lobby’s obstructionism takes a global toll, Helmke adds. “The US is the world’s biggest importer and exporter of guns. There’s no limits on the amount or type you can buy, no limits on the amount of ammunition. We’re the marketplace of choice for drug gangs and dealers around the world.”

The NRA did not return numerous phone calls requesting comment for this story.

From Drug War to Real War
Foreign policy critics worry not only that the Mérida Initiative’s arms-trafficking provision will do little to stem the flow of guns into Mexico—but also that its aid to the Mexican army and police agencies will only escalate the violence. For this reason, La Jornada dubbed the initiative “Plan Mexico”; a persistent criticism of Plan Colombia has been that US military aid indirectly supports the army-linked paramilitary network whose long litany of atrocities is well-documented (and whose very leaders are wanted in the United States on drug charges).

US and Mexican officials implicitly seek to avoid such analogies. Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, told the BBC: “The idea of comparing this package with Plan Colombia generates resistance in both countries. At least in the US, more and more voices question the effectiveness of the help that was given to Colombia.”

But officials have implicitly endorsed the analogy. Mexico’s Prosecutor General Medina Mora said on a trip to Bogotá in 2006 that Mexican law enforcement should “learn through an exchange of information with Colombia about the best way to combat organized crime.” Meeting with his Colombian counterpart Mario Iguarán, he hailed President Álvaro Uribe’s “democratic security” program as “a comprehensive, integrating vision.” Medina noted that the two governments in 2003 formed the High-Level Security and Justice Group, a joint effort to fight narcotics and arms trafficking.

Evident interpenetration of Mexico’s drug cartels and security forces suggest this dynamic experienced in Colombia is poised to repeat itself. In his congressional testimony in support of the Mérida Initiative, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas A. Shannon said cartel operatives have infiltrated municipal and state law enforcement in Mexico, “substantially weakening these governments’ ability to maintain public security and expand the rule of law.” Bringing the Mexican army massively to bear in drug enforcement may only make it easier for the cartels to infiltrate the military.

The violent contest for Nuevo Laredo exemplifies the risks of military involvement in the cartel wars. President Fox’s 2005 deployment of army troops to the town only seemed to escalate the violence. That summer, a clash broke out between Zetas and their rivals with machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers. Residents of the city’s Colonia Campestre district reported hearing several rounds of shots and explosions at a local home. When authorities arrived, the house was empty but damaged by machine-gun fire and rocket blasts. Federal agents discovered three AK-47s, two 9mm handguns, a hand grenade, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Agents also found two grenade-damaged vehicles on a nearby street. In response to the incident, the United States temporarily closed its consulate in Nuevo Laredo.

After Alejandro Domínguez, a veteran agent of the federal prosecutor’s office, was gunned down hours after he was sworn in as Nuevo Laredo’s police chief in June 2005, more federal agents were sent in to investigate his slaying—and got into a shoot-out with city police three days later, leaving one federal officer wounded. Army troops took control of the city, suspending the local police force’s powers.

If Zeta co-optation of the municipal police was evident, it is less clear whether the federal forces were attempting an even-handed crackdown or were themselves collaborating with the Gulf Cartel’s rivals. In any event, the federal presence did nothing to de-escalate the violence. “The army is here and the federal police are here,” said Raymundo Ramos, president of the Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee in the summer of 2005. “But the thugs carry on killing with impunity.”

Another indication of the drug-smuggling industry’s penetration of law enforcement is the access that the cartels seem to have to official (or at least very official-looking) Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) uniforms. In May 2007, federal army troops exchanged fire with 20 gunmen equipped with AR-15s, bullet-proof vests, and AFI uniforms at a checkpoint in Michoacán. In Chiapas, presumed Zetas dressed in AFI uniforms opened fire on a state police patrol with AR-15s, leaving one dead and two wounded. In Coahuila, four men in AFI uniforms kidnapped the state’s chief anti-kidnapping investigator, Enrique Ruiz Arevalo, in Torreón.

The cartels also evidently have access to army uniforms. In February 2007, gunmen armed with AK-47s and dressed as federal soldiers attacked two police stations, killing seven, in Acapulco. The cartels’ use of rocket launchers may also indicate friends in the Mexican military.

In Colombia as well, the US has been complicit in arming violent outlaws. Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the United States of supplying arms to Colombian military units that collaborate or even overlap with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country’s most powerful right-wing paramilitary organization, which is officially listed by the US as a terrorist organization. Despite official efforts at “demobilizing” illegal armed groups in Colombia, paramilitarism has exploded in the eight years Plan Colombia has been in effect—and has survived the official disbanding of the AUC. While noting some modest improvements, Amnesty International’s 2006 year-end report on Colombia found that “serious human rights abuses remained at high levels, especially in rural areas,” and that “abuses by paramilitary groups continue despite supposed demobilization.”

US complicity in arming Colombia’s paras evidently extends beyond military aid to co-opted army units. The Colombian government has announced that it will seek the extradition of eight unnamed persons affiliated with the US banana giant Chiquita Brands International for their involvement in the company’s payments to illegal right-wing paramilitary groups. In March 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty in US federal court to making payments to the AUC, and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. An OAS study into the affair found that thousands of AK-47s bound for the AUC—which is held responsible in thousands of killings and massacres—entered Colombia through Chiquita’s private banana port of Turbo. The largest shipment was apparently brokered by Israeli dealers in Panama, with the weapons pirated from the Nicaraguan police force.

The Brady Campaign’s Helmke expresses some reservations about weapons falling into the wrong hands under the Mérida Initiative. “You want to make sure they’re being used for the purposes they’re intended to be used for,” he says. “I’ve read enough about how weapons in Iraq have wound up missing. People like guns for a lot of different reasons, not just the official business.”

But the dilemma may run deeper than that, even if the nightmarish violence on the southern border finally prompts Congress to buck the gun lobby and seriously crack down on the arms trade. Prohibitionist solutions have dramatically failed to halt the illegal drug trade and may be no more likely to work for arms. Arms may be harder to hide than drugs, but their capacity to co-opt military and law enforcement—the more fundamental issue, ultimately—is likely the same. By providing further firepower and intelligence capabilities to military and police forces themselves infiltrated by (or collaborating with) the cartels, the Mérida Initiative could fuel Mexico’s violence, upping the ante in the war for narco-supremacy.

—-

This story first appeared, in slightly different form, in the March/April edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.

RESOURCES

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
http://www.bradycampaign.org

Arms and Security Initiative, New America Foundation
http://www.newamerica.net/programs/american_strategy/arms_security

Violence Prevention Research Program, UC Davis
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/

See also:

PLAN MEXICO
Militarization and the “Mérida Initiative”
by Laura Carlsen, Foreign Policy in Focus, WW4 Report, December 2007
/node/4744

From our daily report:

Chihuahua: rural activist killed
WW4 Report, March 18, 2008
/node/5276

Mass graves in Ciudad Juárez
WW4 Report, March 16, 2008
/node/5261

Chiquita sued over FARC payments
WW4 Report, March 18, 2008
/node/5274

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CIVIL WARS, NORTH AND SOUTH

Perspectives on Colombia from the US Civil War

by Paul Wolf, Upside Down World

On February 4, up to a million Colombians participated in public demonstrations against the FARC insurgency. Organized by supporters of President Alvaro Uribe Velez, the call of the day was to denounce the terrorists.

The propagandistic depiction of guerrilla terrorism is being used to mobilize advocacy of an equally indiscriminate and destructive counter-terrorism. In Colombia, there is a self-righteous condemnation on every conceivable ground of those who oppose the government, a total war against those openly associated with the insurgency, as well as a secret diplomacy that seeks to lure moderates into co-optation and support for the regime. Those caught in the middle are asked to choose sides.

Colombia has endured an uninterrupted, low-intensity civil war since about 1948. Even before then, Colombia’s history since its independence was one of civil war interrupted by periods of peace. And yet, despite hundreds of thousands of casualties in the last sixty years alone, the government denies the existence of an insurgency within its borders. Too weak to seize power, but too strong to defeat, the rebels have now been recognized by neighboring Venezuela as belligerent armies. A review of the application of International Humanitarian Law to the US Civil War provides a surprising perspective.

Flashback to the US Civil War

[T]he Federal Army has made no progress in subduing the Insurgent States. — I agree with you that the time is come for offering Mediation to the United States Government, with a view to the recognition of the Independence of the Confederates. I agree further that in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States, as an Independent State.

Letter from British Foreign Minister Lord John Russell to British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, Sept. 17, 1862.

British recognition of the Confederacy was never to materialize. Only a month after this was written, and after news of the Northern victory at Antietam was received, and Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation heard round the world, the British Cabinet “doubted the policy of moving, or moving at this time.” One can hardly imagine what might have happened if the Cabinet had moved earlier.

Francis Lieber was a nineteenth-century liberal author of a textbook on international law. A German immigrant, Lieber had been a slave-owner while teaching law at South Carolina College. After attending Columbia College in New York, he became enlightened to the idea that slavery was immoral, and became an outspoken advocate for the Union cause. Three of his sons fought in the US Civil War, on different sides. One of them, a Confederate, died in the battle of Williamsburg.

After the US Supreme Court’s decision in The Prize Cases, recognizing the rebellion in the United States as a civil war, both sides attempted to apply the laws of war, but these rules were not well known. Lieber’s article, “Guerrilla Parties Considered in Reference to the Laws and Usages of War,” soon attracted the attention of the Union Army. After revision by a board of army officers, it was published by the War Department in 1863 as General Orders No. 100, “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field.” Known as Lieber’s Code, it has been revised and renamed several times, including as the Hague Regulations of 1899 on the “Rules of Land Warfare.” In 1956 the US Army renamed it the “Law of Land Warfare, Basic Field Manual 27-10.” Lieber’s article was the first codification of what is now called International Humanitarian Law, or the laws of war. It’s noteworthy that the first systematic classification of the laws of war was made in the context of a civil war. Lieber wrote:

I had no guide, no groundwork, no textbook. I can assure you, as a friend that no counsellor of Justinian sat down at his task of the Digest with a deeper feeling of the gravity of his labor, than filled my breast in the laying down for the first time such a code, where nearly everything was floating. Usage, history, reason, and conscientiousness, a sincere love of truth, justice and civilization, have been my guides; but of course the whole must be still imperfect.

One of the most basic principles of Lieber’s Civil War code was that enemy troops were to be taken prisoner, if possible, rather than killed. Troops could refuse to give quarter “only by [order of] the commander in great straits making encumberment by prisoners impossible.”

The rebels were to be treated as prisoners of war when captured. The Code defined combatants in fairly broad terms. Not only captured enemy soldiers, but civilians attached to the enemy army, high ranking officials of the enemy government, and diplomatic agents without a safe conduct could be legally taken as prisoners of war. Hostages, if taken, “rare in modern war,” must be treated as prisoners of war, but chaplains, doctors, and nurses should be left free unless detained for special reasons, in which case they should be exchanged. The North had threatened to treat officers and crew of Confederate privateers as pirates, but this was never carried out, perhaps due to threats of retaliation. It would have been illegal to treat them as pirates, since they were members of a belligerent force.

Even had they engaged in piracy, though, the North would have been obligated to treat them as prisoners of war. An interesting example occurred in 1885 in the District Court of New York, when Judge Brown held that a vessel of Colombian insurgents, captured on the high seas by the US Navy and condemned for piracy, was engaged in “an expedition technically piratical” when captured. The judge released the vessel under the mistaken belief that the Secretary of State had recognized the belligerency of the Colombian insurgents. (US v. Ambrose Light, 1885)

Lieber’s Code provided for, but did not require, the exchange of prisoners. The North and South did exchange prisoners on the initiative of President Lincoln, although the North agreed to these exchanges rarely, taking advantage of the South’s manpower shortage. Deserters, if recaptured, could suffer death. An uprising by the inhabitants of an occupied area constituted a crime, and could be punished in the courts martial of the occupier. Scouts in disguise, armed prowlers, war rebels in occupied territory; spies, traitors, and war traitors; voluntary guides, and guides proven to have intentionally misled, could be punished by death if caught in the act.

The placing of bounties on the heads of enemy leaders was considered a war crime. “Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.”

Lieber’s Code, as applied in the Civil War, also recognized the principles of the laws of war concerning property. Public property of the enemy could be appropriated. “Strictly private property” would be protected in occupied territory, but the “victorious invader” retained the right to tax the people or their property and to appropriate property such as homes, land, boats, and even churches for temporary and military uses.

The US Civil War resulted in numerous court battles over the ownership of property after the war, and reparations to be paid for property taken by one of the belligerents. It was held after the war, in courts in the United States, Great Britain, and international arbitral tribunals, that the United States was not, as a rule, responsible to foreign states for property losses or other injuries to their nationals caused by the Confederates, even if the foreign state had not recognized the belligerency of the South. In this way, the North had limited its civil liability through the recognition of belligerent status to the Confederacy.

By Civil War Standards, Venezuela’s Recognition was a Hostile Act

“Unless justified by necessity, [the recognition of belligerency by a third state] is always and justly regarded as an unfriendly act and a gratuitous demonstration of moral support to the rebellion.”

General Grant’s message to the US Congress, December 7, 1875

Venezuela’s recognition of the belligerent status of Colombian FARC and ELN rebels indicates, at the very least, that rebels found in Venezuela would not generally be extraditable if they had not violated the laws of war. For extradition to occur, the crime must be a crime in both countries. This is called the principle of dual criminality. Lawful acts of war, when committed by belligerents, are not crimes.

Secondly, the formal recognition of belligerent status to Colombian guerrillas opens the door for Venezuelan diplomacy with the government and the rebels on equal terms. In some respects, this is what Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is doing now, as unofficial mediator of Colombia’s negotiations with the FARC.

Third, and what should be obvious after reading this article, is that Venezuela has provided the FARC with a forum to argue for the legitimacy of most of its practices, which are condemned all over the world—yet do not violate the laws of war, at least as conceived by Francis Lieber and applied in the US Civil War. If the FARC were a belligerent force, it would have the legal right to tax the part of the country it occupies. It could imprison those who did not pay the tax. It would have the right to detain high-ranking government officials, and diplomats traveling through its territory without safe conducts, as prisoners of war. It would have the right to execute captured intelligence agents. A prisoner exchange would be a perfectly reasonable thing to propose. None of this would be considered hostage-taking.

Even the FARC’s taxing of coca growers within its territory would not be a violation of the laws of war. Presuming the FARC were a belligerent occupying force, it could legalize coca. Coca leaves are already legal in many countries in South America, most notably Bolivia and Peru. Bolivian President Evo Morales was elected by coca growers, and he has at various times proposed legalizing cocaine. Presumably, Bolivia has not done so because it does not want to be isolated internationally. The point of all this is that growing coca or taxing coca growers is not a war crime.

On the other hand, the government’s placing of “dead or alive” bounties on the heads of guerrilla leaders, in the words of Francis Lieber, is a relapse into barbarism.

As a neutral state, Venezuela is under no obligation to assist the government of Colombia in its war against the insurgents. In fact, it is prohibited from doing so. This is quite removed from the ordinary cooperation between states in matters of law enforcement. And, to the dismay of many observers, it could indicate a willingness on the part of Venezuela to support the insurgents, in some way short of illegal intervention.

Colombia follows the lead of the United States, which in the case of third world insurgencies, equates revolutionary violence with terrorism. Any act by the revolutionaries is inherently terrorist. Any response by the established government is inherently counter-terrorist. But it’s hypocritical and moralistic to ask revolutionary groups to adhere to higher moral standards than those accepted by states. It is also unrealistic and unjust to insist that victims of state terror acquiesce in their repression.

Respect for the principle of self-determination of people, and the duty of states to develop self-government in their non-self-governing territories are basic tenets of the United Nations Charter. When self-rule is denied, the result can be violent revolution. This is the basic problem in Colombia, not terrorism.

—-

Paul Wolf is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. practicing international human rights law. Permission to reprint this article is granted. Much of it is based on the scholarly research of Richard Falk.

RESOURCES:

Richard Falk, ed., The International Law of Civil War (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, US, 1971)

See also:

BOLIVAR’S SWORD
Venezuela’s Recognition of the Colombian Insurgency
by Paul Wolf
WW4 Report, February 2008
/node/4963

From our weblog:

FARC commander killed in raid on Ecuador; Chávez warns of “war”
WW4 Report, March 2, 2008
/node/5185

FARC free four more hostages
WW4 Report, Feb. 29, 2008
//node/5169

Uribe exploits mobilization against FARC
WW4 Report, Feb. 7, 2008
//node/5055

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, March 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

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