{"id":1423,"date":"2006-05-11T17:57:46","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T21:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2006-05-11T17:57:46","modified_gmt":"2006-05-11T21:57:46","slug":"the-wide-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1423","title":{"rendered":"The Wide War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>How Donald Rumsfeld Discovered the Wild West in Latin America<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Greg Grandin<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How fast has Latin America fallen from favor? Just a decade ago the Clinton administration was holding up the region as the crown jewel of globalization&#8217;s promise: All is quiet on &#8220;our southern flank,&#8221; reported the head of the US Southern Command, General Barry McCaffrey, in 1995, &#8220;our neighbors are allies who, in general, share similar values.&#8221; &#8220;The Western Hemisphere has a lot to teach the world,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defenselink.mil\/releases\/1997\/b042497_bt200-97.html\">said McCaffrey&#8217;s boss<\/a> Secretary of Defense William Cohen two years later, &#8220;as the world reaches for the kind of progress we have made.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Today, with a new generation of leaders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/docprint.mhtml?i=20060501&amp;s=grandin\">in open rebellion<\/a> against Washington&#8217;s leadership, Latin America is no longer seen as a beacon unto the world but as a shadowy place where &#8220;enemies&#8221; lurk. &#8220;They watch, they probe,&#8221; Donald Rumsfeld <a href=\"http:\/\/wsws.org\/articles\/2004\/nov2004\/rums-n23.shtml\">warns of terrorists<\/a> in Latin America; they look for &#8220;weaknesses.&#8221; According to the new head of <A href=\"http:\/\/www.southcom.mil\/home\/\">Southcom<\/a> General Bantz Craddock, the region is held hostage by a league of extraordinary gentlemen made up of the &#8220;transnational terrorist, the narco-terrorist, the Islamic radical fundraiser and recruiter, the illicit trafficker, the money launderer, the kidnapper, [and] the gang member.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Terrorists throughout the Southern command area of responsibility,&#8221; Craddock&#8217;s predecessor warned, &#8220;bomb, murder, kidnap, traffic drugs, transfer arms, launder money and smuggle humans.&#8221; Problems that Clinton&#8217;s Pentagon presented as discrete issues &#8212; drugs, arms trafficking, intellectual property piracy, migration, and money laundering, what the editor of <I>Foreign Policy<\/I> Mois?s Na?n has described as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fsa.ulaval.ca\/personnel\/vernag\/EH\/F\/noir\/lectures\/Five_wars_of_globalization.htm\">&#8220;five wars of globalization&#8221;<\/a> &#8212; are now understood as part of a larger unified campaign against terrorism. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/index.mhtml?pid=82089\"><strong>The Pentagon&#8217;s Wide War on Everything in Latin America<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/article.pl?sid=06\/05\/11\/1446202\">Greg Grandin on Democracy NOW!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Donald Rumsfeld Discovered the Wild West in Latin America by Greg Grandin How fast has Latin America fallen from favor? Just a decade ago the Clinton administration was holding up the region as the crown jewel of globalization&#8217;s promise: &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1423\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-mX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}