Slaying A Monster In Colombia

Investor's Business Daily

Freedom: Colombia is said to be the only nation where guerrillas die of old age. But this is changing, as shown by the millions of Colombians who turned out Monday to protest FARC, the rebel group that's plagued the country for 46 years.

The protest took place in at least 27 cities in Colombia and 122 more around the world, from Paris and Rome to places as diverse as Brisbane, Australia; Maribor, Slovenia; and Norman, Okla.

An ambitious call for a "million voices against the FARC" from a group of young Colombians active in a Facebook social networking group on the Internet snowballed within a month into a mass demonstration against a communist plague not seen since the days of the Berlin Wall.

A man in Madrid, Spain, backs the protest in Colombia with a leaflet reading: "Yes to freedom, yes to the truth, yes to life, Colombia without FARC."

An estimated 5 million people out of a population of 44 million marched in Colombia alone. The event suggested that something major had been bottled up and that things are about to change.

Calls for "no more FARC, no more kidnapping and no more lies" brought the demands of the public from this illegal armed group into stark focus. Despite goading from the media, the students didn't want to get into politics, argue strategy or bring up other grievances. They just wanted to put the FARC on notice that its time is up.

On the surface, calling on the Marxist FARC to cease existence may seem more symbolic than forcing the physical fall of the Berlin Wall. But there's more to this than just symbolism.

The sight of millions of young Colombians demonstrating peaceably has robbed the FARC's Marxist narcoterrorists of their media-cultivated image of guerrillas fighting for "the people."

Leftists in the West can no longer romanticize these kil-lers as they were as recently as December. That was when film director Oliver Stone praised them as "heroic for fighting for what they believe in." Then Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez called on the world to recognize these drug-dealing Marxist killers as a legitimate fighting force.

In their united demonstration, Colombians just said no.

Romanticization of Marxist guerrillas has been around for a long time, and those who support such terrorists have never been seriously shamed or called to account for supporting them.

In the U.S., Tom Wolfe described how New York's rich and powerful paid tribute to the Black Panthers in his 1970 masterpiece, "Radical Chic." Around the same time, Americans recoiled at the television spectacle of a smiling Jane Fonda glamorizing the Viet Cong on top of a gun turret alongside her boyfriend, radical student leader Tom Hayden.

In the 1980s, left-wing "Sandalista" hippies in Birkenstocks paid tribute to rifle-toting Marxist Sandinistas in Managua as President Reagan struggled to halt their export of Marxist "revolution."

Even today, Danish merchants still sell FARC T-shirts and openly donate the proceeds to FARC fronts in Europe. Dutch colleges seem to be recruiting centers for their troops. They've even got a nest of supporters in North Carolina.

The ultimate in guerrilla romance is Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who shot his way to power in 1959, created the image of Che Guevara and has been charming Hollywood directors from Stone to Steven Spielberg ever since.

Which brings us back to the FARC, which has lingered since 1966 as the world has changed and democracies have taken hold all though Latin America.

In the wake of Reagan's contra war in Nicaragua, most guerilla groups disbanded and rejoined society. The now-respectable president of Uruguay, Tabare Vazquez, is one such example of an ex-guerrilla who embraced democracy and rejected terror. The continent holds many others.

As the likes of Stone and Chavez cheer from afar, the FARC pretends that there's no such thing as democracy in Colombia and continues to wreak havoc from bases hidden deep in the Amazon jungle.

The millions who have taken to the streets, however, have made clear that there is indeed a place for democracy in Colombia, but not for the FARC.

Source: Investor's Business Daily