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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 10/1/10

Rafael Correa stands up to a police insurgency for his people

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Message John Grant

It was the perfect diplomatic response without an ounce of outrage or threat.

Mrs. Clinton, in the view of many on the left, is not to be trusted after her and President Obama's dismal performance during and following the June 28 Honduran coup last year. In this case, her delay in responding publicly about the events in Ecuador would seem, indeed, a matter of "closely following" events to see where they were leading before making any kind of statement.

At the time of this writing much remains uncertain, so there's still lots of "following" to do before taking a real stand.

President Correa has made it clear he's committed to a left-leaning agenda in Ecuador. Last year, he threw the US military out of its huge base at Manta, something US leaders are certainly not happy about. He also dismissed the national debt because, he said, it had been contracted by corrupt regimes.

"This is a coup attempt led by Lucio Gutierrez," Correa claimed during the day's havoc. Gutierrez is a former military officer and ex-president impeached in 2005. As a politician, Gutierrez has been an ideological chameleon, shifting with the winds to hold power, at one juncture a populist man of the people, at the next a supporter of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is opposed by many on the left.

As in other left-leaning Latin American nations, USAID and the rightwing National Endowment For Democracy pump lots of money into various oppositional groups in Ecuador. And as elsewhere, our military retains warm relations with elements in the military. There's lots of opportunity there to foment un-democratic opposition for a popular, democratically-elected, left-leaning president.

Where the events of September 30 lead is uncertain. One can only hope the leaders of the United States especially Hillary Clinton can move beyond the old tired American militarist and corporate power consensus of support for corrupt military regimes over democratically-elected reform leaders. This consensus is what brought us the ruthless 1954 Guatemala coup and a host of other disasters for the people of Latin America, including the shameful posture taken in the Honduran coup.

The economist-politician Correa is in a hardball struggle with the forces of militarism as tries to make his poor nation work for the majority of its people. In a way, President Obama is facing the very same struggle. They both find themselves at the helm of grotesquely lopsided economies. The difference is, Correa stands up to the opposition.

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I'm a 72-year-old American who served in Vietnam as a naive 19-year-old. From that moment on, I've been studying and re-thinking what US counter-insurgency war means. I live outside of Philadelphia, where I'm a writer, photographer and political (more...)
 

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