A Peace Mandate?

Yesterday was strange -- most streets were vacant, few buses ran, and for the most part people stayed home, but there were 10,000 additional troops on the streets.

Colombia Adds Troops to Bogota Streets as Uribe Begins 2nd Term

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia deployed 10,000 extra troops to Bogota streets to protect against rebel attacks today as President Alvaro Uribe becomes the first leader in almost two centuries to start a second consecutive term.

Bombings killed 23 people last week in three separate attacks in Bogota and around the country, and authorities found 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of explosives in the city in the past 15 days.

En discurso de posesion, Uribe manifesto su dilema: ¿Seguridad o paz? (El Tiempo)

"No nos frena el miedo para negociar la paz. Confieso que me preocupa algo diferente: el riesgo de no llegar a la paz y retroceder en seguridad", dijo el Mandatario.

"We won't be held back by fear from negotiating for peace. But I admit something worries me: the risk of not achieving peace and taking a step back on security," said the president. So security is achieved through violence (repression, paramilitaries, more military funding, etc) and peace (talking with the enemy) threatens it. This is why so many people see Bush/Uribe as two heads on the same monster: endless war.

Then again, the last serious round of peace talks was a disaster, and then-president Pastrana is almost universally seen as being responsible for their dramatic ineffectiveness (good summary by the BBC here). No politician wants to risk failure on that magnitude.

But at least to my (possibly quite naive) eyes, conflicts like Colombia's call for statesmen, not politicians. As Garrison Keillor is fond of saying, "Live as boldly as you can today and a little more boldly tomorrow." Fine advice for an individual; could it work for a country?

I hope Uribe follows through on his new stated focus on support for the poor in the form of education spending, healthcare, and small business loans. True political participation, poverty reduction, opportunity and education -- these are the standards by which a rebellion sparked by gross inequalities can one day be dissolved.

Human Rights Watch summary of Colombia HERE.