Anti-counter-terrorism Democrats

Who could be surprised by the Democrats’ behavior towards one of our strongest allies in the Southern Hemisphere, as reported in the Washington Times’ editorial today;

Consider the record of Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia, since his election in 2002. A deal with paramilitary forces has resulted in more than 31,000 fighters surrendering their weapons. By boosting the size and strength of security forces and going after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Mr. Uribe was able to reduce the guerilla’s presence in central Colombia. The country is safer — the annual murder count, on a steady increase before Mr. Uribe took office, has declined by more than one-third — and Colombia is more prosperous. The rate of increase in gross domestic product has gone up. Throughout his tenure, moreover, Mr. Uribe has been a strong U.S. ally in a region without many.
    With these positive steps, it’s little surprise that Mr. Uribe enjoys solid approval ratings at home. In Washington earlier this month, however, Mr. Uribe found that neither his success nor his support of the United States could win him so much as a cordial reception on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, under pressure from interest groups, initially rebuffed requests to meet with Mr. Uribe. She did meet with him, but later issued a press release that did not even mention the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement that Democrats have held up and that Mr. Uribe had traveled to Washington to advance.
    Instead, the speaker used the meeting as another opportunity to hit at revelations that members of Mr. Uribe’s government had been involved with paramilitary groups. Sen. Patrick Leahy cited the same as reason for blocking some $55 million in military aid to Colombia last month.

Democrats complain about how other countries perceive us and our foreign policy – who could blame the rest of the world with fickle, irresponsible terrorist-hugging jackasses running the Congress like a pack of elementary school nerds.

And the Washington Post today, gets to hammering on Uribe claiming that legislators in Columbia have been arrested for participating in para-military groups and that they’re political allies of Uribe’s. If you scroll down towards the end of the Post article, you see Uribe has been instrumental in dismantling the organizations;

Uribe ordered the commanders jailed in Itagui prison in northern Antioquia state until they confessed their crimes and provided details about the land and other property they had stolen during a long and bloody dirty war. But the disclosures by Semana, coupled with the fact that the commanders have so far revealed little about their crimes, have cast doubt on the government’s effort to dismantle the paramilitary groups and bring justice to victims.

Just because the dismantling isn’t going as fast as the Democrats and the Post would like, this is certainly no reason to withold funding from one the few leaders in Latin America committed to fighting terrorism in the region. I’d like to see them get this exercised about Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran dismantling their organizations and plans.

Category: Politics, Terror War