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i suspect that the rightwing whackjobs in power these days would see supporting far right paramilitaries as the right thing to do. the logic would probably follow from a notion of what it means to "protect the national interest"...
i hope that by saying this you do not imagine that i am endorsing the american policy re. colombia in any way: i just am not at all sure that this language of ethics will get you terribly far--on other words, the claim that "x is the right thing and y the wrong thing" basically assumes different ways of framing policy matters, but ducks the problem of laying out these ways of framing...you could argue just as effectively that present policy does not in fact "protect american interests"--it does quite the opposite, accelerating the process of american political trouble in south america, continuing the pattern of neocolonial domination the americans seem to love so much (all the while blabbing about freedom), confirming the most cynical readings of american policy advanced by critics of it.
or you could argue that the contradiction between what the americans say about themselves and what they do in this case is self-evident and that in itself is a problem for the protection of etc...
you could argue that official american support for organizations that murder trade union acitivists runs against everything the us is supposed to stand for--and it does, and that not only in colombia.
you could make this argument any number of ways--but saying that x is wrong and only that isnt terribly effective simply because the contrary response "no it isnt" in principle ends the discussion.
i mean why, really, is it wrong that the americans support far right paramilitaries? because they kill people? well, isn't the basis for any state power the monopoly on legitimate violence, and isn't legitimate violence defined by the (potential) for the state to kill? so the problem is the direction of state power, which is a political matter, not the nature of state power--at least in this case.
i gotta go.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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