Even with the US military machine focused on the Middle East, we can't afford to forget about the US government's imperialist war in Colombia. Bush's latest military budget contains $98 million to specifically support Colombian soldiers protecting the Cano-Limon pipeline in Colombia that rebels rendered inoperative throughout most of 2001. More profits for his oil buddies!
Plan Colombia is a good example of the practice of Low Intensity Warfare and is important for clarifying our understanding of U.S. foreign policy in conflicted areas around the world. The U.S. government, in the service of an international capitalist system, seeks to send one message to the entire world, best exemplified in the acronym TINA: "There Is No Alternative". No alternative, that is, to the current trend of investors and corporations to dominate the entire planet. They do this under the guise of a neo-liberal philosophy of "free trade", designed to bring about the integration and globalization of the world's economy. We are witnessing the end of an historical epoch dominated by the power of Nation States and replacing it with the international Corporate State. Low Intensity Warfare has a history dating back at least to the Boer Wars in South Africa, but the U.S. did much to perfect this warfare in the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Low Intensity Warfare is a response to guerilla warfare, which many third world people used in attempts to overthrow colonial domination by foreign forces. To be successful, national liberation guerilla fighters first had to win the hearts and minds of the local people. This is because insurgency movements, rely on the ability to strike out at the enemy and then quickly vanish back into the general population. To gain the confidence of the locals, the insurgents would be active in local politics and support programs and institutions that would provide services in areas like health and education or organizing labor unions. Many guerilla fighters would also work very hard to educated their neighbors, which spread literacy throughout the third world. In guerilla warfare the combatants are often described as fish and the indigenous population are the water in a stream, the fish are always able to blend in with their natural environment. Low Intensity Warfare seeks to dry up the stream. Counter-insurgency often consists of the U.S. and other first world governments supplying large quantities of arms, training and money to the military forces of countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and now Colombia, under the cover of defending the government and "democracy" from rebel forces. These governments and military forces are only looking after the interests of the very small sector of the population who control the wealth and power. The US likes to maintain dictatorial governments who might be brutal to their people but supply US companies with cheap labor and other favors. If the guerrillas release themselves from this colonial arrangement, the American corporations could lose huge profits. Low Intensity Warfare defends the interests of the ruling classes and capitalist institutions of these countries. Counter insurgents do not seek to actually combat the armed insurgents; their war targets the bases of support in the civilian population. Thus, in the Nicaraguan conflict, the Contra army rarely engaged the Sandinista army. Their targets were the collective farms, the rural school system, the medical clinics, the mayors and politicians, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, labor union organizers or any village or group of people whom the military intelligence suspected of supporting the Sandinistas. Frequently this kind of warfare leads to massacres of large numbers of civilians to terrorize them and prevent them from supporting the guerrillas. Low Intensity Warfare includes torture and murder of infants and children in front of their parents, decapitation, mutilation, burning alive, mass rape of women and children, etc. Many of the more well-known and brutal slaughters in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala were carried out by military forces trained in the United States in the arts of torture, murder and terrorism. During the Nicaraguan conflict the CIA was caught mining a harbor. The captured U.S. agents carried some manuals written for the Contra army and its civilian death squads by the U.S. military. These manuals instructed the U.S. supported terrorists on how to select, target, and assassinate perceived supporters of the Sandinista government. Reports of slaughters and massacres of civilian populations by military forces supplied, trained and supported with U.S. taxpayers' money has embarrassed the U.S. military and government. A convenient way to avoid this kind of embarrassment is to hire mercenaries to carry out Low Intensity Warfare. U.S. taxpayers' money is spent to arm and finance death squads and foreign militias who oppose their ruling government which also is uncooperative with the U.S. government. This allows for the appearance that the U.S. military is not directly involved in civilian massacres. It is important to remember that Low Intensity Warfare is not really aimed at a military victory against its opponents. While the rebel forces fighting in Columbia may not fit the profile of a Liberation Army they do pose an alternative to the consolidation of the power and wealth of the worlds power elite under the programs of neoliberalism and Globalization. What the Low Intensity Warfare of Plan Colombia seeks is to bring the civilian and indigenous populations to their knees and force them to accept capitalism's final solution, globalization of the world economy and the dictatorship of the corporate state. This capitalist dictatorship will be shrouded in what amounts to a military "democracy". This form of democracy is like the U.S., where the rich and powerful control the political parties and superstructure with their wealth and power. This control guarantees the outcome elections and insures that their interests will dominate the government agenda. In the client states, however, the military and the death squads are always not far in the background in the event some real alternative might come to power either through elections or by other means. Even the U.S. uses these tactics with government programs like COINTELPRO, which results in military actions against students, infiltration and subversion of groups like the Black Panthers and assassination of their leaders. In Chile the U.S. sponsored the overthrow of the freely elected government of Salvador Allende. Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, referred to this military coup and the massacres that accompanied the ascension to power of the Pinochet dictatorship as "the re-establishment of democracy in Chile." The message behind the Plan Colombia and Low Intensity Warfare to the Colombian people is "There Is NO Alternative," TINA. No alternative to the poverty, no alternative to military democracy, no alternative to death squads, no alternative but submission to the needs of global capitalism; the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization. You must serve these interests and the interests of the Corporate State, allow them to steal your countries natural resources, destroy its environment, do their bidding and work as good wage slaves for less than subsistence wages. You will submit to the destruction of your culture, and allow yourself to be indoctrinated by the mass media into being a mindless consumer, happy to be forever entertained, passive and submissive, keeping your mouth shut and voting when told to. You will forget any notions you may have about the state having any responsibility for the welfare of those it governs. You will do all this or you and your family, will never live a day of your lives free of fear and in peace. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO PLAN COLOMBIA! Or perhaps there is, but that depends on what the world's exploited and impoverished people, its wage slaves, students, you and I, and others decide to do to resist TINA, the culture of the Spectacle and the capitalist state. FROM Regeneration #6 January/February 2002: Plan Colombia and the Art of "Low Intensity" Warfare http://www.ainfos.ca/A-Infos/ainfos09204.html
