Troubling Nonsense Coming Out of CNAS
Why try to pretend that this should be taken seriously?
Second, it’s not just about drugs. The Venezuelan alliance is almost a classic geopolitical attempt to deny the US access to Latin America — probably including Mexico — and to gain access to our southern border. FARC is not only the world’s largest producer of cocaine, but continues to be a murderous terrorist insurgency. The cartels, which are fast becoming a worldwide concern, are not only about drugs, but also about control of territory and other criminal activities — murder, kidnapping, extortion, counterfeiting, money laundering, among others. This is emphatically not the old, “comfortable” Mafia, and legalizing drugs, even if it were possible, would not make these trans-national criminal organizations go away, particularly when they have the support of narco-states like Venezuela has become. They will just shift to other sources of income.
I quite like Tom Ricks, but really, what’s with letting your blog become a platform for this nonsense? Venezuela and Iran are trying to seize control of Mexico and gain access to our southern border? “Narco-states” like Venezuela “will just shift to other sources of income” if drugs are legalized? What sources of income would those be? And how precisely are Venezuela and Iran and Cuba supposed to “deny US access” to Latin America, much less Mexico? Is it worth noting, at all, that Mexico has a population and economy which are each 4 times as large as those of Venezuela? And yet we’re supposed to be worried about magical narco-terror networks that can just create money whenever they want?
Why would anyone ever bother to pretend that any of this makes sense? It worries me that this garbage is coming out under the CNAS banner.
Since when did Venezuela suddenly become a “narco-state”? Last I heard, Mexico has a far better claim to that title.
Ummm.. isn’t CNAS funded by companies with hefty military contracts?
Well, I’m trying to provide a link of the article I read in my Nation a few weeks ago. The link thing is not working for me, so I’ll just try this:www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/hodge
Whats wrong with denying the U.S access to South America? there have been millions of deaths, disappearances and a general climate of fear caused by the U.S support of latin american dictators and right-wing terror groups. In what sense are drug cartels any worse for South America than U.S foreign policy?
So, Venezuela is the “narco-state”, while its neighbor, Colombia, produces most of the drugs of the hemisphere, is riven by an unending civil war by narco-guerrillas and narco-paramilitaries with and against Colombia’s military, and 1/3 of the Colombian Congress is under arrest, in prison, or under investigation for collaborating with narco-paramilitaries, Venezuelan officials regularly bust Colombian narco-traffickers and narco-paramilitaries operating in its territories without anyone in Colombia claiming Venezuelan brigands are doing the same, and STILL no one has presented any decent evidence of Venezuelan support for Colombian narco-guerrillas.
Oh. Okay. Given such basic realities, of course Venezuela is the narco-state and Colombia is just the good, hard-working Southern neighbor receiving tons of U.S. aid and trying its best.
But, don’t you understand? Columbia has a highly professional US trained military! Therefore, they are not a narco state. They are one big US foreign policy success.
I believe Ollie North and Elliot Abrams are available. They did such a nice job last time around.
It’s interesting that conservative foreign policy commentators still apparently comprehend a world where the principal adversaries of the U.S. are not nation-states.
Sorry, CANNOT comprehend.
Seconding larryb33, and adding:
Ricks if a f*cking neocon; any truth that he tells is incidental.
FP magazine and blog should be shut down; they aren’t 100% bad, but in the end they are no more than variation 137 of right-wing propaganda.
Think of their recent writings as trying to manage down their record in Iraq, while see what new wars they can pour gasoline on.
Odd that a neocon would claim that invading Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake the United States has ever committed…
Only loooooooooooong after it was clear what was happening. I had truly put him under ‘reformed neocon’, except that he’s now taking the line that we need to stay in Iraq, because [whatever reason]. At this point he gets reclassified as somebody trying to manage a failure; some ‘modified limited hangout’ is required.
Just look at that frikkin’ article in this post. He’s laying the groundwork for escalating the next war. Pure and simple. Hyping Venezuala as a threat to the US is not something an honest man does.