More Drug War Complaining
Looking beyond our borders for a moment, the New York Times has an interesting piece about Ecuadorean resistance to further participation in the drug war. Therein one finds this little nugget:
Look, I understand subverting democracy for War on Terror purposes, but I think doing so for the War on Drugs goes a bit too far. We could be using this political capital for getting cheap oil, people, let's get our shit together.
But to Ecuadoreans, Manta is a flash point in a regional debate over the limits of American power in Latin America.
In 1999, American officials negotiated a 10-year agreement with President Jamil Mahuad to set up the elaborate airborne radar detection project at Manta, a port of 250,000. The deal did not require the United States to pay rent to Ecuador. Nor did it allow Americans stationed here to be judged in Ecuadorean courts for crimes committed in Ecuador. Nor was it submitted to the Ecuadorean Congress for approval.
Mr. Mahuad was toppled in a military coup a few weeks later.
Look, I understand subverting democracy for War on Terror purposes, but I think doing so for the War on Drugs goes a bit too far. We could be using this political capital for getting cheap oil, people, let's get our shit together.
posted by Austin 5-000 at 2:13 PM
1 Comments:
Reading about Mr. Mahaud, I was struck by the abundance of "foreign sounding names" among current and former South and Central American heads of state. Mahaud, Fujimori, Bachelet, Kirchner, Stroessner -- if Spanish-speaking Suramericanos can handle all this multiethnicity, why can't Americans concerned about "foreign-sounding" Obama? Now, granted, several of the above characters have been prosecuted by their nations for human rights violations, but I don't think that can be traced to their extraction!
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