It never ceases to amaze me that groups who are allegedly fighting for "social justice" can do things like this: Bomb attack during festival in Colombia injures 22
Suspected rebels detonated a bomb during a festival in a central Colombian town, injuring 22 people, including children, police said.Posted by Steven Taylor at February 17, 2024 01:27 PM | TrackBack
Residents of Sacama, in Casanare state, were holding a party in the town's main park Sunday night when a brawl broke out among revelers. As police went to break up the fight, a bomb exploded, wounding 11 children, five adult civilians and six police officers.[...]
It was not immediately clear whether the brawl was a setup.
Police on Monday blamed members of Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Four suspected rebels, who allegedly detonated the bomb but were not involved in the fight, were captured, police said.
SOLVING FOR WHAT?
Uribe claims his “war on terrorism” is reducing human rights abuses. But while indicators show a decline in kidnapping, the government’s own sources show human rights violations attributable directly to the armed forces on the increase. In one example, several months ago, 2,000 people were arrested in Saravena in Arauca, rounded up in a sports stadium and marked on their wrists with indelible ink. Only 1 of those people remains under arrest. This is what we call a “miracle fishing” exercise. The rebels used to detain a busload of people in the hope of finding a rich individual to kidnap for ransom. Now the State will round up hundreds of civilians in the hope of finding a single rebel.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=4801
Posted by: Stephen at February 17, 2024 06:31 PMI hardly defend such practices--but that's not the point, What do the FARC think they are going to accomplish by blowing up bombs in town squares and hurting children?
Posted by: Steven at February 17, 2024 07:43 PMI think the mentality is the same one that allows all of us to do horrible things in the pursuit of our goals - i.e. the ends justify the means. In our case, we (regrettably) kill thousands of civilians in the overthrowing of a regime we disagree with. I remember in during Afghanistan (btw, I did agree with that war) reading reports about how our bombs blew up wedding parties and such. Sure, it wasn't planned like FARC's - i.e. it was accidental. But the effect on the population is identical.
I think when you get to the point where it's all about the ends and the means take a long back seat, this is the result - regardless of how pure and good your ends are. It turns to shit when you're willing to forget that how you get to your ends is just as important as the ends themselves.
Justifying torture in interrogations of terrorists... Trashing international law that we ourselves wrote with good reasons... Fabricating WMD lies to justify bizarre political theories based on imperialist strategies for world domination... Or a host of other amazingly stupid "ends justify the means" decisions I've seen in the past three years.
It's the exact same mentality. We just happen to do it on a global scale.
Posted by: Hal at February 17, 2024 08:17 PM