I found an interesting article here : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=524314&in_page_id=1811
The article discusses the current situation in South America. Specifically, the Colombian government recently killed a leader of the Farc who was hiding just across the border in Ecuador, without Ecuador's permission. This has angered Hugo Chavez and Venezuela; possibly because they fear similar action in Venezuela. From what I can gather, Chavez is a huge supporter of the organization and there seem to be fairly clear ties between the Farc and his country. Recently he has attempted to change the world view of his relationship with the the Farc to the of mediator instead of collaborator. He claims that the recent release of Farc hostages is a direct result of his requests from the organization. In response to the death of the Farc leader Chavez has moved a large portion of his military to the Colombian border threatening war.
This is perhaps one of the most extreme examples of state sponsored terrorism that I can recall. To my knowledge Iran has never deployed its own military in response to an attack against Hezbollah, though it has threaten to become involved when Israel chases the terrorists across the Lebanese border. This article claims that America supports the Colombian efforts. In the wake of shattering relations with Venezuela, the US-Colombian relationship has evidently strengthened. Currently the US has a small force in Colombia working to hinder the drug trade.
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The comments at the end of the article show that there are people in a few different places that don't think America will do anything because they're tied up in Iraq. This is a valid concern. What would America do if Chavez was serious about going to war with Columbia? Would it be wise to intervene. One of the comments after the article says that America can't intervene because everyone will call them "war mongers and war criminals." It seems that from the Cold War on, that's all the credit America is given--especially for their intervention in Iraq. It seems that few people realize what the war in Iraq is really about. Anyways, it would be hard for America to intervene in Columbia when all of its forces are in Iraq.
I honestly don't think the US will do anything. Chavez loves the rhetoric and posturing, and the US has interests in Venezuela, and still believes in sovereignty despite its foray into Iraq. We are also over-extended throughout the world and we don't need to get involved in Chavez's childish antics, which is what he wants. If the US were to get involved militarily it would be one more reason for the world's public opinion to hate us. We need to stop being the world's policemen.
This is something that I was wondering about as we were discussing the situation in South America in class. My first thought in discussing this before seeing the blog was whether or not the US would intervene should Venezuela wage a war against Columbia. I agree that there is a high likelihood that the US would do nothing because we have already invested so much in Iraq and at this point Bush would not want to risk anything more. However, at the same time I could see Bush wanting to play hero and try to regain some credibility back by improving things in Columbia and help them to overcome the enemy. However, if it is far enough in the future that there is another president I have a hard time imagining the new president (regardless of who it is, republican or democrat) getting invovled in another war that does not directly affect us. They have seen enough of Iraq to see how it has affected Bush and his reputation as the leader of the United States.
I had no idea that the U.S. was supporting Columbia. Whenever I hear about the U.S.'s foreign interests, I wonder if our involvement in so many countries is essentially detrimental to the nation. The original post mentions that the U.S. has a small force fighting the drug trade in Columbia. How effective is our involvement? Is the cost less than the benefit of our involvement? Is that measurable?
Reuters Video: Link
Hopefully the above video works. It's a video of the aftermath of the raid that took place in Ecuador.
The buildup on the borders of Colombia is more a demonstration of power than an actual threat to invade or retaliate. Even if there is a military conflict, I don't see the US getting directly involved for a couple reasons, 1) The notion of another military operation in a worn out citizenry won't go over well, 2) Columbia is not a huge asset of the US, 3) Getting involved will only make our position in the world worse with Venezuela willing to exploit the US in the international arena like the Iranian President. We may fund the Colombians but a direct confrontation with Ecuador and Venezuela seems unlikely.
~Greg
I don't think comparing US intervention if Venezuela invaded Colombia and the current war in Iraq accomplishes much. First, we would be defending a soveriegn entity from invasion. Those who comdemn the US as empirialistic would be hard pressed to use their rhetoric in such a circumstance. If anything troops stationed in Iraq would be the problem. However, if the new president is a Democrat, they are supposedly going to pull them all out and then they won't be in Iraq anyhow will they.
As I discussed earlier I can't imagine whoever is elected president this year involving themselves in another war. The hot topic of the elections is what to do about Iraq, democrats want out, republicans want to stay there. But no matter what party the elected president belongs to nobody will make the move to another war. In the end it was detrimental to George W. Bush's presidency and nobody will make that mistake again.
I completely disagree. If unpopular wars meant that future wars would never happen then we wouldn't have any arm conflict after Vietnam, but we have had both the Persian Gulf War and the Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. the reasoning just doesn't hold up.
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