WAR

Things are not going too well for Colombia at the moment. Chavez is bad news for us. He is communist, distorts the truth with ease, and he thinks that Colombia and Venezuela should be reunited as one country. (It has only been since 1830 that Venezuela and Colombia were separate countries. That’s why our flags are so similar.) He has been taunting President Uribe and sticking his nose into neighboring countries’ affairs for a while now.

For example, Chavez is friends with the Nicaragua president. Nicaragua is turning more communist, again, and right now there is a weekly inflation on their currency. Things are not in favor of the people in general, only the rich. Added to the bad news, the Nicaraguan president’s wife is witch, literally. She sometimes announces things that come from the mouth of the devil and generally participates in very strange religious practices. Imagine the kind of influence she has over the government. Nicaragua has a bank account (I believe it is in Venezuela) where a percentage of all of their petroleum sales go (business with Venezuela). It is an account to help the poverty in Nicaragua. However, the government does not keep record of any of the flow of money in this account, very few have access to any information about it, and interestingly enough nothing much has improved for those living in poverty. Suspicious.

Saturday a major guerrilla leader was killed by the Colombia military. We were happy about this. However, the actually bombing took place in Ecuador, unwise move on Colombia’s part. So now the good news of the death of the FARC leader is countered by worse news: that Chavez has convinced Ecuador to sever all diplomatic ties with Colombia and investigate what took place on their side of the boarder. One of our soldiers was killed as well, apparently by the Ecuador military. But things get worse.

Chavez also announced that we have some outrageous number of troops waiting on the boarder with Venezuela, all lies. Chavez said he wanted to avoid war, but he will not allow anyone to divide or weaken them. First, it appears that he has given millions of dollars to the FARC. He also has united most of the leftist leaders against Colombia. (Ecuador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, and to a smaller degree Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru). Colombia would have to enlist men if we went to war. Luckily the UN is keeping an eye on the situation, because things in South America are not looking favorable for Colombia.

As I was discussing this with my friend, he said the real reason Chavez has been so hostile towards Colombia is because Colombia (specifically President Uribe) is so friendly with the states and the states are so anti-Communist. Chavez actually blames the US for the attack in Ecuador and calls the US the master of "sub-president Uribe." But as the elections approach in the US, Colombia’s relationship with the states will likely change. The party elected will also decide if we pass a trading agreement between the states and Colombia. I’m not sure if it would help or hurt our economy to have the agreement passed, but one thing is for sure, our economy will change greatly. Colombia right now seems to be between a rock and a hard place. Please pray for wisdom for our leaders, peace for South America, truth to shine though, and that Chavez by some miracle will not be reelected as President of Venezuela.