Written by John Lindsay-Poland
The Pentagon budget submitted to Congress on May 7, 2009 includes $46 million for development of a new U.S. military base in Palanquero, Colombia.
The official justification states that the Defense Department seeks "an array of access arrangements for contingency operations, logistics, and training in Central/South America."
The military facility in Colombia will give the United States military increased capacity for intervention throughout most of Latin America. The plan is being advanced amid tense relations between Washington and Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and despite both a long history and recent revelations about the Colombian military's atrocious human rights record.
President Obama told hemispheric leaders last month that "if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction—if our only interaction is military—then we may not be developing the connections that can over time increase our influence and have a beneficial effect."1
In this Obama is on point. This base would feed a failed drug policy, support an abusive army, and reinforce a tragic history of U.S. military intervention in the region. It's wrong and wasteful, and Congress should scrap it.
The new facility in Palanquero, Colombia would not be limited to counter-narcotics operations, nor even to operations in the Andean region, according to an Air Mobility Command (AMC) planning document. The U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) aims to establish a base with "air mobility reach on the South American continent" in addition to a capacity for counter-narcotics operations, through the year 2025.2
With help from the Transportation Command and AMC, the SouthCom noted that "nearly half of the continent can be covered by a C-17 without refueling" from Palanquero. If fuel is available at its destination, "a C-17 could cover the entire continent, with the exception of the Cape Horn region," the AMC planners wrote.3 <READ MORE>
-thanks to SOAW
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