I am an Ingrid Betancourt Fan.
Jul 5th, 2008 by David Anderson
Once in a while a nation has the privilege of finding a transformative leader. In the last Century, The Vatican had His Holiness John Paul 2. Great Britain had Margret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. America had Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt.
This century saw the rise of a fearless lady, Ingrid Betancourt of Colombia. She had a heart for her people. It lead her to ignore death threats. She took on the Drug cartels and corruption in her government. When the two main parties showed themselves not up to the challenge, she formed Oxygen. The third party was quite popular and provided the leverage necessary for the people to make the ruling party deal with corruption. She looked as if she was on her way to winning the Presidency when she was kidnapped by leftist extremists. It has been five years. Over that time a worldwide movement sprung up calling for her freedom. I am overjoyed to say that our voices have been heard and she is free. Leaders the world over recognized this great event.
I admit that I would have political disagreements with the Senator, but this week they don’t exist. Thank God for the safe return of this woman of courage and the other captives. If she can be a spark for reform in a system as broken as Colombia’s, Americans have no excuses.
what a lovely post, dave.
For five years I have worn a pin with the names of the three hostages who were fellow employess. A fourth was murdered by the narco-terrorists after their plane was brought down.
The captives were dressed identically to their captors to make armed rescue difficult and possibly fatal. We may never learn all of the details of the rescue and some things may be better left unsaid.
Ingrid Betancourt seemed to be troublesome and was allegedly chained to a tree as a result of her escape attempts. She was defiant to resucuers who she thought were simply more narco-terrorists.
The rescue appeared to have had international support that even brought an old ally back into the fight. There was a lot of deception and snooping and who knows what else. What counted were the results.
Contrast this with the fumbled efforts at hostage rescue taken by the Carter Administration. His Secretary of State resigned not because of the failure but because we dared try. Imagine the response of an Obama Adminstration to such an outrage. Military force would be out of the question and surveillance might offend the ACLU.
Note that Obama caters to the New Protectionists in opposing closer trade links with Colombia. A witch-doctor’s brew of Smoot-Hawley and das Kapital may be a change in snake oil but would it get FDA approval. A better remedy might be mineral oil. Millions of barrels of it.
David: Minor nit — it’s “Colombia,” not “Columbia.” (As a SPanish teacher that drives me a little nuts.
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Betancourt is a wonderful politician. There was speculation in 2002 that current president Alvro Uribe’s cousin helped the FARC abduct her. Becuase despite most cliams the right wing paramilitaries and left wing ones often work together in their hidden and dangerous games for political control.
She was a democrat with a number of positions that made her seem republican. Her transformative view of politics would help that country immesuarably. She is a refugee in France now becuase of how far to the right that government is, and the violence it is willing to use against its own citizens. She was a much needed voice of balance there and I hope she runs for office against Uribe.
Thanks, Hube. Correction made. Can I delete your comment to hide the hurried nature of this post. The rain stopped and I had only x amount of time for dinner and Google doesn’t catch misuse only misspellings. On second thought, I have good self esteem so I will leave it.
Arthur, I am so glad your guys are back and safe. I read your post on Common Sense. It was touching and genuine. I rejoice with you also.
I caught the end of the documentary on CNN thanks to noticing the name on your post the other day. Good job.