The US has a long and sordid history of this sort of interference in Latin America. It predates Bush and his neocons by decades. You can find a short, concise list here: http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

The driving force is not ideology, it is economic. As long as our corporations have some interest, those who accommodate these interests are friends; no matter how heinous they are to their people (Pinochet, for example, or the Argentine Juntas of the '70s and '80s), these have been Responsible Leaders. Their opponents have always been labeled irresponsible, Leftists, Terrorists, or worse, Communists, often when they were not (the Sandinistas, who opposed Anastasio Somoza, who was nice to our corporations, for example). There is no correlation between who we support and their human rights or democratic credentials, despite the narratives used by the likes of Fred Hiatt. These qualities simply are not relevant to our commercial interests.

Is the motivation economic in this case? You'd better believe it. Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and others are throwing off US imposed neo-liberal economic ideologies, opposing the US backed Free Trade Area of the Americas, declaring the World Bank persona non grata, etc. because these entities favor our commercial interests over those of the Latin American peoples. Colombia is still firmly in our control and will serve as the wedge we will use to try to destabilize these "renegade" nations. Nothing new here. What is new is that South American nations are wising up to our tactics and are uniting against us.

shooter242 says:

have to agree c'estmoi and question the motives of commenters here regarding the use of borders to provide shelter for killing raids. The Palestinians do it, Hezbollah does it, Al Qaeda does it. [...] Negotiation? That doesn't seem to work very well, Israel gave up Gaza and it returned nothing but rockets.

Before you go on reading, please have a look at this map:

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6761/palastinianlandloss8tz.gif

Now consider what you said. Do you think that the Palestinians ought to be grateful for getting Gaza back? Look at the map! It's like the Israelis stole their car and gave them a hubcap back in compensation. And those borders they are hiding in? Their own occupied territory, of course!

You share the same irrational mindset that Fred Hiatt displays. You're blind to the real story, blind to the suffering of those who have been crushed by overwhelming force, blind to the real source of the anger that will be sent our way--because we support Israel in all things, including this blatant land theft.

Colombia can easily deal with FARC without invading sovereign nations, just as Israel can easily end the Palestinian war: by seeking a just resolution to the real grievances of those they oppress. But that means actually making meaningful concessions, not throwing the dog a bone. For Israel that would mean giving up valuable land (not just Gaza) that actually already belongs to the Palestinians, in effect retreating to the '67 borders. The Palestinians have long accepted this solution. For Colombia it would mean dismantling an oligarchy and bringing in true democracy, so that those whom FARC represent can actually participate in the political life of their nation. But of course that means that in a truly democratic Colombia the present pro-US government may fall, so we can't have real democracy, can we?

The problem is not that negotiations don't work; the problem is that we (the US and those we support) do not negotiate in good faith. We usually demand that the aggrieved party make significant and fundamental concessions even before negotiations can begin. The effect is that no negotiations can take place until our position is ratified. No one in their right mind will negotiate like this.

There are a couple of problems with your argument. You are transmogrifying the attitude of Gazans today to be the long-standing Palestinian position. But the Palestinians have long ago agreed to UN resolution 242. Israel's intransigence and encroachments in intervening years has discredited those willing to deal and has hardened the position of many Palestinians.

Second, did you look at the map I linked do? This map makes it amply plain who is taking who's house.

I wonder how many Colombians have internet access and speak and write english so well. Educated here, were you? Like Uribe?

One wonders just how inclusive Colombian democracy is. The February demonstrations that MarioH mentions in his post were organized using Facebook:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/08/business/protest11.php

How many peasants have access to Facebook? I don't know how things are in Colombia, having never lived there. But in the parts of Latin America where I did live the lower classes were nearly invisible to the middle and upper classes, despite comprising the vast majority of the population.

I also have it from someone who did spend time there three or four year ago as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team group (www.cpt.org) that FARC was only one leg of a triad of terror, the others being private militias organized by large landowners, and the Colombian Army. The peasants, of course, were caught in the middle. Here is the CPT take on current events: http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2008/03/05/colombia-interpreting-recent-events