“…The US military intervention in Colombia constitutes the longest counter-insurgency war in recent world history.
Beginning with President John F. Kennedy’s launch of the “Green Berets” in 1962 – and escalating in the new century with President Clinton’s $7 billion dollar military program (Plan Colombia) in 2001 -
- to Obama’s inauguration of seven new military bases in the present -
- the US has been at war in Colombia for 50 years.
Ten US presidents 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans – both liberals and conservatives -
- have alternated in carrying out one of the most brutal counter-insurgency wars ever recorded in Latin America.
In terms of civilian killings – trade union and human rights activist murders – and the dispossession of peasants -
- the US backed oligarchy has the dubious distinction of being at the top of the list of tyrannical rulers.
To understand the bloody history of US imperial intervention in Colombia requires us to examine several key dimensions of the relation in a comparative-historical framework -
- that highlights the specificities of Colombia’s ruling class -
- and the strategic geo-political importance of Colombia to US hemispheric dominance…”
(cont..)
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