Society
I have proof that Bin Laden is a murderous, fanatical bastard: his gang was trained and funded by the United States
Published 08 October 2001
War on Terror: Comment
George Bush Sr was part of a continuing stream of US presidents when he declared war on drugs. In short, he declared war on plants. There are obvious drawbacks to this course of action: how were the plants informed of the war? Do they know they are winning? Won't it be embarrassing for the president who finally admits defeat? Will he or she be forced to sign a declaration of unconditional surrender to a large green leaf? Given the unrelenting ability of plants to spring up just about everywhere that isn't covered in concrete, you are forced to ask a further question: what drugs did Bush take to believe that he could fight and win a war against our photosynthesising friends? Although I have no actual proof that a magic mushroom enema featured in the decision-making process, I instinctively feel it would be worth a tenner if Ladbrokes ever offer odds. Whatever the biochemical combination was, it would make Hunter S Thompson look like a lightweight.
With his recent proclamations, Dubbya is following in a family tradition: Bush Sr declared war on drugs, Junior declares war on terrorism. Given America's role in drug-running and terrorism, we can only assume that if Dubbya's own offspring ever decide to go into politics, they will declare war on something else that America is heavily implicated in - obesity, for example.
America's sponsorship of terrorism doesn't end at Nicaragua or the Middle East; it is not merely historic, it is current. It comes wrapped in the rhetoric of the war on drugs and, in one instance, it is called Plan Colombia. Like most recent action plans involving the US that have resulted in violence, it has an innocuous-sounding name. (By the time this article appears, America's plan to bomb Afghanistan will probably have changed its title to Operation CareBears Forever.) Plan Colombia, however, is anything but innocuous.
According to the US authorities, Plan Colombia aims to eradicate cocaine production, to promote human rights and to alleviate poverty. Honest. That is what they said. Promise, they really did. You can stop the hollow laughter now, please. The US intends to improve human rights and living standards by supplying the Colombian government with the biggest military aid package in Latin America since the end of the cold war. Bolted on are a few "social justice" and "poverty-reduction" programmes - though these are about as much use as a Blue Peter badge on a cluster bomb. Most of the prospective donor countries for these programmes have been scared off the plan, alarmed by the scale of US military aid.
Originally, the Colombian government, under Andres Pastrana, asked that the plan comprise 55 per cent military aid and 45 per cent developmental aid. In a move that probably made the president of the National Rifle Association, Charlton Heston, glow with patriotic pride, America upped the gun quota for Colombia, providing it with a $1.3bn military aid package, worth 80 per cent of the deal. Now, some of you Christopher Hitchens-hating, liberal scum are no doubt wondering how that much weaponry (including 30 Black Hawk helicopters, 33 UH-1N helicopters and an estimated 200-300 US military "advisers") will help sponsor human rights. And I say that it is totally wrong to question US foreign policy at this time! You don't understand America's pain! You Stalinist, anti-American bastards! You are saying those people at the World Trade Center deserved to die . . . Oops, sorry, wrong column: I got confused and thought I was an overweight, supposedly left-wing journalist*.
The Colombian government has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere - which, considering the competition in the region, is a hard-won title. There are well-proven links between the Colombian army and the paramilitary "death squads" originally set up by landowners in the 1960s. Human Rights Watch, writing to Madeleine Albright, the then US secretary of state, emphasised the collusion between the army and the "death squads". It said that it had observed that the Colombian military and paramilitary units shared intelligence, weapons, vehicles and medical aid. In one case, "death squads" attacked a village supposedly sympathetic to "leftist rebels": the squads arrived in Colombian army vehicles, owned by the 24th Brigade, and murdered approximately 150 civilians.
Almost 80 per cent of human rights abuses in Colombia have been committed by the paramilitary "death squads". They have attacked human rights monitors and observers. They have played a major role in assassinating trade unionists, which has resulted in the murders of more than 1,336 union activists in the past decade - more than in the rest of Latin America combined. The human rights department of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, Colombia's largest trade union federation, has had 3,000 of its members killed since it was founded in the mid-1980s. For some time now, the union has been fighting a war against terrorism, much of it funded by America.
For decades, we have been able to point to the most evil group of thugs in the world's playground and be almost certain that the US has aided them in order to further its geopolitical interests. I don't know if Osama Bin Laden is guilty of master- minding the attack on the World Trade Center. However, that he and other mujahedin were armed, trained and funded by the US is proof that he is a murderous, fanatical bastard.
* Not hard to do
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