By Justin Delacour
Latin America News Review
December 28, 2008
After posting an excerpt of
an article by Calvin Tucker that questions Colombia's old, defunct laptop allegations against Venezuela's government, I have decided to republish my
following rebuttal to an anonymous commenter's assertions that (1) "every sentient being... knows FARC and Chavez have the same goals" and that (2) Tucker's article is "transparently idiosyncratic, lacking pedigree, provenance, credibility, and even a whiff of journalistic integrity."
Question posed by anonymous commenter:
If you were Uribe, just how would you go about convicting the president of a sovereign nation of conspiracy under these evidentiary circumstances...?My answer to anonymous commenter:
If I were Uribe, I'd do exactly what he did and not bother trying to convict anyone because (1) the "evidentiary circumstances" were anything but auspicious for a case and (2) he knew it.
The logic of your argument is extremely poor because you lack basic knowledge of the region. I suspect you don't even really understand the immediate history. Prior to November 2007, Hugo Chavez's relations with the Colombian government had been essentially cordial (with the exception of a short flare-up at the beginning of 2005). Uribe invited Chavez to broker hostage negotiations with the FARC in September 2007.
So here's how the convoluted logic of your argument goes. Uribe --who was on good enough terms with Chavez to negotiate the construction of a binational pipeline with him, to have the Venezuelan leader go so far as to call Uribe his "brother," and to have Chavez serve as a mediator in hostage negotiations with the FARC as late as November of 2007-- suddenly "discovers" some incriminating laptops just in time for the Colombian government to go on a diplomatic offensive against Ecuador and Venezuela in the wake of Uribe's bombing of Ecuadorian territory. So suddenly --only six months after Uribe has
invited Chavez to serve as a mediator in hostage negotiations with the FARC-- the newfangled story is that Chavez and the FARC are ideological brethren with intimate military and economic ties.
Now, explain to me this, my "sentient" one. If Chavez was so chummy with the FARC, why would Uribe negotiate the construction of a pipeline with Chavez and invite Chavez to serve as a mediator in hostage negotiations with the FARC as late as September of 2007? Given that you fancy yourself to be a person of high "pedigree," I am oh-so curious as to what undoubtedly stellar explanation you have to offer.
And please tell me this, my dear man of great "provenance." What interest does Hugo Chavez have in providing the United States with a pretext to step up its hostility towards Venezuela? Not even the Cubans would think to run the risk of inviting the wrath of Uncle Sam by aiding another country's guerrillas in a post-Cold War era in which the Soviet umbrella is a relic of history. There is simply no geo-political logic to your argument. Why would Venezuela's president make such a perilous bet,
with no prospect of winning anything in light of the fact that the FARC hasn't been within striking distance of achieving power for several years and has negligible popular support in Colombia? What's the logic?
I'm sure that a man of such "integrity" as yourself can dazzle us with his brilliance by answering these questions.
Now, here's what
I think. I think Colombia and Venezuela's relations went sour when Chavez started taking his mediator role seriously and talking about negotiating for peace, which was way beyond what Uribe bargained for but was also the primary interest of Chavez and his fellow Colombian negotiator Piedad de Cordoba. While Uribe was only half-heartedly interested in the most limited sort of negotiation (over hostages), Chavez has had a long-standing interest in helping resolve the conflict so as to remove the pretext for U.S. intervention in the region. The problem for Uribe was that
Chavez's overtures were putting greater international pressure on him to negotiate seriously at the very moment when Uribe was poised to deal major military blows to the FARC. In other words, the interests of Chavez and Uribe would become fundamentally incompatible once Chavez called for peace negotiations. Since Chavez's efforts at mediation were therefore creating problems for Uribe, the best way Uribe could find to neutralize Chavez was to trump up a whole smorgasbord of outlandish charges against him and to thereby sully the image of Chavez in the international community. In other words, the whole purpose of the laptop ruse was to remove Chavez from any mediary role. In that, Uribe has largely succeeded, but at great cost to the truth, in my view.