January 18, 2009   We at ECrisis hope our readers will watch the lecture with Admiral Stavridis who talks of the one billion "Americans" living in the Western hemisphere here as he urges increased awareness and historical-cultural perspective across the entire region. He noted that 40% of the hemisphere lives in poverty with many zones not "emerging" in to the modern, global economy although the USA is connected with Latin America with 40% of its trade existing across the hemisphere.
 
We at ECrisis admire Admiral Stavridis and commend his hard work to promote the ideal goal that the U.S. military under his command should read all Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels to grasp Latin sensibilities. Well, we really do not commend this, much as we enjoy Marquez's surreal novellas. But we violently reject Stavridis's opening premise that "Every one of the nations in this hemisphere except Cuba today are democracies...and we work very well together with the military of Ecuador." In fact, Stavridis lied as he said this. The lie that Venezuela and Ecuador are functioning, honest democracies destabilizes all geo political positions across the Americas by barring real time data, actual due diligence and leads to the current crisis which is that no North American is protected in all Chavez-Cuban nations for personal or business reasons unless the central command out of DISIP permits their passages. Many businesses from the known free world have simply packed up and left Latin America, not once receiving support from the U.S. "diplomats" who essentially loathe U.S. businesses nor finding any protection under law in five nations now, where Cuban-style corruption has replaced rule of law.
 
While we agree with  CSIS as the "HEAD OF U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND SPEAKS AT CSIS .. hosted Admiral James G. Stavridis, head of the United States Southern Command. Admiral Stavridis explained some common misconceptions about the region and the need for increased engagement with United States' large trading partners to the south." He also suggested that the major problems in the region, narco-terrorism and poverty, could be addressed using "smart power approaches" we reject his claim that Venezuela and Ecuador are democracies and that Ecuador's military "works well" with the USA. Ecuador's military today is immersed in illicit money making for the Correa-Chavez-FARC machinery, now formally enmeshed with dirty Russian style mafias, DISIP and Iran.
Stavridis suggests correctly the application of `smart power' which is commendable but as such, is utterly worthless in a land where sole dictators are corrupt, corrupting and exploit one and all. Smart power does not have a chance against the current Russian mafia mores. Unless and until the criminals are behind bars, sustained growth, democracy, justice and quality of life in Ecuador is truncated or deleted like some cipher. All the `smart power' in the universe will not undo the culture of Chavez's corrupt operatives leading Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba and Nicaragua. Common sense, a cousin to smart power, is more the appropriate antidote and that common sense must first restore democracy, even handed law and order and functional democracy, lest all remain a mockery.
 
Specifically, Ecuador's military is now illegally running GOE's major money maker Petroecuador which has not only stolen from USA companies but has been stealing from Ecuadoreans for over five years. Ecuador’s military is also aiding and abetting narcoterrorism in Ecuador and the region. There is no data to corroborate the Admiral's claims that the USA works well today with the military of Ecuador. Certainly this used to be the case but today there is nothing much to "work well" with and such a claim debases the integrity of the U.S. Armed Forces who do not work well with narcoterrorists, racketeers and illegal weapons runners which is what the armed forces of Ecuador do so well. We cede that this used to be a happier relationship between the militaries while we note that today's claims are so shallow that nothing the GOE military does viz USA military is much more than shallow window dressing. GOE happily takes USA monies, technology and training but refuses to apply U.S. military ethics and accountability. Stavridis warns of the complete end of democracy and human rights protections in nations where the police and military are not independent from central governmental controls. Stavridis needs to grasp the facts that Rafael Correa has commandeered all police, military and judicial bodies in Ecuador under one functioning Marxist dictatorship, which is not democratic. Indeed, Stavridis tells the audience that US AID is now embedded inside his SouthCom operations. This infiltration of anti US actors who have yet to deliver any functional service outside some small broccoli farms clearly has impacted SouthCom's capability to report the real facts about Latin America due to US AID's stubborn insistence in this hemisphere that all non democracies are fabulous because they hurt the USA and promote more socialism...supposedly to "help the poor."
 
Because US AID's portfolio for South America is more surreal than a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, reading their internal reports compares to reading a Marquez novel for AID's novel and clever wordsmithing to hide hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars wasted on anti USA efforts in a lethal cocktail with the Soros socialists who promote expanding narcotics horizons. The February 18, 2008 Wall Street Journal reports, "...rather than seek to better monitor their own projects for signs of fraud, ... officials have repeatedly colluded with aid recipients to hush up corruption findings and continue to lend to miscreant governments..." This describes US AID's historic project portfolio in the Andes completely, although we note there are miniscule exceptions to this rule. However, this quote originally described the World Bank's anti corruption team which was just forced out....for doing their job. No one is forced out by US AID for doing their job in Latin America because all US AID staffers are pre approved for their support for the Chavez-Correa agenda as if by secret handshakes and pre-approved monopolistic U.S. IQC contract holder monopolies of political and development "work" to insure Soros's club for legalizing socialism and making legitimate what should be deemed illegitimate. Admiral Stavridis should neither demean the highly committed U.S. military by forced inter relationships with the very paid political actors, also called US AID contractors, who debase normative ethics and American principles nor should he pimp to promote these unaccountable governments and their overpaid NGO cheerleaders who have yet to help one person, outside a few broccoli growers and a few random, odd assortments. The U.S. Armed Forces of course benefits from interagency activities to promote all phases of democracy sustaining endeavors but because US AID is itself so overwhelmingly de facto anti-USA and anti-functional democracy and its next of kin- free markets and capitalism, the U.S. Armed Forces must never partner with these activists as if to give legitimacy to their illegitimate, dishonest activities. Stavridis must rethink his efforts to make the best the enemy of the good and be very careful about infiltration and loss of integrity to satisfy the demands of the overarching propagandists called paid U.S. NGOs who would not know  functioning democracy if it hit them on the head.
 
Stavridis spoke at length about the horror of the FARC and global terrorists even as he turns a blind eye to US AID's payments to NGOs to debase Colombia's Uribe and elevate the FARC terrorists. Stavridis does not need to be schizophrenic because he does not work for Jimmy Carter and as such, is not bound to lie as so many paid US AID actors do and claim that rigged elections are just all right with the U.S. military. Stavridis needs to never again parrot his incorrect and harmful NGO implants at Southcom. Relying on State Department's WOLA or the NED for intel will get him in to trouble. It has certainly gotten Rice and Negroponte in to trouble. Their own diplomatic corps now complain loudly that after years of giving away massive support to the pro FARC and pro Chavez Senators Dodd and Reid plus Congressmen Delahunt, Pelosi et al, that they are shocked that the pro Chavez/pro FARC U.S. Democratic congressional leaders- all in Chavez and Soros's pro drugs pocket now- are not grateful nor courteously respectful to them. The real truth is that these folks simply got outed for doing what they have been doing for years which is welcoming and assisting anti-US destabilizers and thugs such as Piedad Cordoba, FARC moll currently serving as co mistress of Miraflores Palace with another Tokyo Rose named Eva Gollinger, currently campaigning to shut off free speech. We remind that respect, born of actual acts worthy of respect- not selling out- must be earned every day. No one respects patsies, door mats, useful idiots and those who surrender their ethics just because Soros/Chavez/Correa want them to. We can only hope they turn states' evidence as they should and be mindful of the old saying that liberals are liberals until their daughter is raped. They just got raped and in so doing, sold out U.S. foreign policy to assist the very terror groups they are supposed to be against. Stavridis reported that he makes his staff watch Latin soap operas and Latin movies to understand their culture. This is laudable to a point and then must be replaced with real work.  He should be insisting that fact based reporting and due diligence replace cheesy soft porn, supplanting wobbly reports with functional data and forensic accounting, lacking in over half of all U.S. operations today in South America by caveat. By avoiding the mandates of integrity to report the facts, the factual brown out of Latin America expands. It is as if the United States is so busy trying to appease the new wave of badly-educated, immoral adolescent autocrats [Correa, Chavez and Morales] that the USA has hired its own team of enablers. This is not what the U.S. taxpayers had in mind for "democracy promotion" which is never furthered by surrendering U.S. integrity to aid and abet the Soros agenda for narcotics promotions, expansive legalization of that which is illicit, plus the conversion of internationally accepted standards for international finance by these offshore rackets. The U.S. military must never be seen to give cover or program interplay with these dirty actors who retard sustainable democracy.
 
What had been a superb, generally well received and dependable/independent Ecuadorean military in the 1990s is today fully corrupted, overrun by Correa's opaque, unaccountable abuse of the military of Ecuador which is itself not only illicit but bears a dramatic need for fact based review. We do agree with Stavridis that Colombia's President Uribe is an extraordinary man. Stavridis does note that there is a "drift" away from the USA and in the marketplace of ideas for free markets, democracy and liberty, there is competition in the marketplace of ideas [which he claims replaced and ended the Monroe Doctrine], also impacted by outside forces across this hemisphere such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is called "very dangerous" and heading Iran which is a state sponsor of terror, and building a total political -economic tsunami of Iranian totalitarian bases in every Latin nation. Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez think this is a very good idea. We think that this is irresponsible even as we reject Stavridis's theory that debate and competitiveness will delete the totalitarianists overwhelming Latin America today.
 
Southcom's chief of 1500 staff does correctly state that the FARC narcoterrorists when connected with Islamic radical terrorists will be disastrous.

He does state, incorrectly we also believe that Hezbollah has no active role in Latin America today. To combat the terrorists in South America, he promotes no U.S. military involvement but contributions of ideas from the USA working with local ideas..."strategic communications."
 
Again, while we applaud Stavridis's notation that Iran is very dangerous, he is wrong to say that Iran's Hezbollah is not active in Latin America. We fear that while education and awareness is badly needed in the Andean bloc because of the  past 15 years of unchecked U.S. funded propaganda to promote socialism and legalization of the illicit by U.S. paid actors in tandem with Latin America's ridiculously undereducated so called intelligencia which favors Cuban style Marxist educational curricula, that words alone are not enough because the USA sells plenty of words and deeds by their own actors whose quality is simply debilitating and is of course fully handicapped to combat the current waves of corruption, which they themselves helped create, supposedly to help "the poor." Just because scores of US AID actors beavered away to remove any local official designation of what is a terrorist in Latin America...they do not exist de jure by definition in 1/2 of the Latin nations now...does not mean that de facto these terrorists are not active. Of course they are active whether or not US AID reports their activities or not. Iran does not leave home without their well organized foot soldiers of terror and crime while Cuban-Venezuelan -Ecuadorean agents are fully partnered with these thugs today. But the Soros folks and Carter Center do not want you to know this and while fully active in the Andes today, do not report basic truisms. What we want you to know is that unless and until fact based reporting returns to the U.S. government and their former allies called Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, the abandonment of South America to the tender mercies of Castro-Chavez and Correa's dictatorial rule is underway. But you should make you own determination and study the facts.
 
Here is what we know:
 
1. The FARC is a narco terror organization and must be stopped. Stavridis is correct to say that in combination with the FARC, Iran's actors will be unacceptable.

He is wrong to claim that Iran's minions are not already quite active in Latin America today- dead wrong. He is right to note that Iran is installing embassies across South America. Iran calls this "cultural awareness." We call it money laundering, weapons running and Islamo-fascism which has already melded formally with Correa, Evo Morales and Chavez's economic fascism which is creating significant harm to the U.S. economy already, no matter what lies Soros says about Iranian fascism. Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela are state sponsors of terror today, fully and formally doing nothing to cancel the FARC in their lands even as all three are formal sponsors of Iran, complete with waves of human imports from Iran and formal relationships. Stavridis states that any nation combining the FARC with Iran is an unacceptable, lethal cocktail for disaster. Stavridis needs to perform his duty and connect the dots of the facts: these three nations are allied with the FARC and are allied with Iran today. No amount of fake reports from the Andes can dismiss this.
 
2. Stavridis is correct that all should `know your customer' and stay active in self education and cultural awareness. But he should be mindful and responsible that this does not mean surrender or abandonment to Western civilization's best goals, including surrendering to the legitimization underway today in the Andes of all that should be illegitimate. This is not diplomacy but foolishness and an abnegation of high office.
 
3. From our perspective, we were not aware that the USA had officially trashed the Monroe Doctrine, replacing it with overpaid propagandists whose own goals are antithical to U.S. values, along with its sovereign rights to U.S. justice, U.S. democracy in a republic and U.S. ethics. Moreover, Stavridis needs to review the acts by the US AID/Soros teams who work daily to promote the FARC narcoterror group even as he tells us that he is working hard to combat this narcoterror scourge. A house or Southcom divided against itself will not long stand.
 
While the Soros/US AID actors across all U.S. embassies are busy claiming that the current crop of fake democracies in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador are wonderful democracies, what these "NGO" groups have actually done by slight of hind is to install narcodemocracies which are not democracies at all but state kleptocrats and mafias. It is impossibly irresponsible to claim that Venezuela and Ecuador are democracies today for they are not. They are cartels in the new regional bloc of criminal nations.
 
Not to be too dismissive here, we seriously commend Stavridis. He is right that the USA will not likely ever launch a missile in Latin America because the USA in Latin America stands for surrender of U.S. policies but it does have a powerful need to launch ideas, also called education. Stavridis has an obligation to promote functional outreach and educational systems, not the current crop of Marxist-criminal ideologues currently enshrining the legitimacy of the illicit end of Western Civilization's highest values. Rather like shamefully forcing the U.S. military band to perform last summer in front of Ecuador's homegrown Marxist-Leninist Alfaro in Montecristi, now called Ciudad de Alfaro- the seat of government in Ecuador, Chavez's Cuban paradise government that is. It is long past time to stop enabling wide spread corruption and dysfunction. Andean folks irresponsibly do enough of this on their own and have suffered badly for their proclivity to fail at truth telling and development. Far better to stand united for growth and opportunity which can only succeed under the banner of fair play and economic freedom. Instead of selling the globe on the idea that economic freedom is evil, far better to sell the idea that economic freedom is achievable and desirable, for it is.
 
Do you know what your military is selling today?
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis