Above, Colombia's death-squad president Uribe, and his close personal friend, our former death-squad president Clinton, at a Clinton-sponsored schmoozefest last year. As usual, Clinton appears to be doing all the talking.
But Uribe listens. The most recent result of his attentive listening was the invasion of Ecuador last March, in which patently bogus evidence was duly found that the Colombian insurgency (FARC) had its eye on Weapons Of Mass Destruction -- and that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was going to help FARC get them.
Now we all know that Hillary is nothing if not loyal to an old friend. In the aftermath of the Colombian attack, she nailed her colors to the mast:
The Colombian state has every right to defend itself against drug trafficking terrorist organizations.... By praising and supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Chavez is openly siding with terrorists.... Rather than criticizing Colombia’s actions in combating terrorist groups in the border regions, Venezuela and Ecuador should work with their neighbor to ensure that their territories no longer serve as safe havens for terrorist groups. After reviewing this situation, I am hopeful that the government of Ecuador will determine that its interests lie in closer cooperation with Colombia....Obama, as usual, was slightly -- very slightly -- more vague and tepid, but his response amounted to much the same thing:
The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The recent targeted killing of a senior FARC leader must not be used as a pretense to ratchet up tensions or to threaten the stability of the region. The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have a responsibility to ensure that events not spiral out of control, and to peacefully address any disputes through active diplomacy with the help of international actors.By "targeted killing" Barack means the invasion of a neighboring country. Compare the phrase "surgical bombing." Note also that he obligingly uses the magic word "terrorist" -- the all-justifying Philosopher's Stone of late-imperial discourse. He does mercifully omit the bit about drug trafficking, perhaps because from him, moralizing on this subject might seem a bit comical.
Uribe, like the Kosniks, seized eagerly on the quantum-scale difference between Barack's and Hillary's mad-doggery. Uribe, too, is a loyal guy, and he wants us to know that he's very disappointed by Barack's relative lukewarmness -- just as the Kosniks are oddly roused to orgasm by the same quality.
In Uribe's case, one need not take these protestations too seriously. A loyal guy dances with the one that brung him, as I believe Lyndon Johnson once observed.
The Kosnik fervor is harder to understand. Obama didn't bring 'em anywhere. He's promised 'em very little, and he hasn't even given 'em Arpege. They're like some poor podgy, ill-favored soul hoping delusionally to be asked to the prom by the captain of the football team. In the event, of course, she spends Prom Night at home -- blogging, no doubt, though this comparison lands a little close to my own home.
But no matter how neglected, forlorn and forgotten she may be, she's determined to hear no ill of her heartthrob.
