While Chavez broadcasts his support for the FARC to the four corners of the world, he consistently gets the same reply: they are terrorists. That is to say they engage in acts of violence against innocent civilians to advance their cause - whatever that may be at this post communist juncture in history. Chavez, interestingly enough, doesn't deny that they are committing acts of terrorism. He can't. After all he just went to the extremes of foolishness to make himself look the hero by getting the release of two hostages, Clara and Consuelo.
What he argues instead, in a slight of hand that pays huge dividends, is that the biggest, "hyper" terrorist in the USA. This comment actually seams to generate a good deal of agreement, and this writer is not immune to its impact. The flaw, of course, in this "excuse" is that two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed, maimed, displaced and abused in a stupid war promoted by a terrible president, does not excuse the FARC in a completely different part of the world from being the single greatest obstacle for peace in Colombia.
Naturally, Chavez's attitude is familiar to all of us who can remember being kids or have kids. "Yes I broke those plates, but Jimmy broke the window." My sin is so much smaller as to be inconsequential next to his.
But of course the real problem with this form of arguing is that it does work. And for this reason alone Bush should be impeached and made to clean cells at Guantanamo. The US has lost so much moral ground in the Iraqi adventure that it will be years if not decades before we can say: "what you did is wrong" with a clear conscience.
