Pelosi's War
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Congress: The cowardly start more wars than the courageous. Nancy Pelosi's craven altering of House rules to kill off Colombia's trade pact brings that danger to the Andes. If war breaks out, her name will be on it.
April 10 may end up as a date which will live in infamy. The Speaker of the House not only refused to step forward and be counted on approving the vital Colombia free-trade agreement, she ran away from letting anyone else vote on it.
After President Bush submitted the pact to a vote under fast-track rules, she changed them to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon. By a 224-195 House vote, the voting timeline rule on trade pacts was changed from 90 days to whenever. Pelosi now can hold up Colombia's treaty however long her caprice dictates.
"The message Democrats sent today," a bitter Bush warned after Thursday's vote, "is that no matter how steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient."
Pelosi's move leaves Colombia, an ally, in limbo and uncertainty. She may think her clever maneuver was done in a vacuum, but it wasn't. In Venezuela's capital of Caracas, where Hugo Chavez holds forth, and in the jungles of Colombia, where drug terrorists hide out, Pelosi's move was watched closely.
Indeed, within hours of the vote, Latin American media already were calling Pelosi's maneuver the "Chavez Rule."
The Venezuelan dictator is no doubt fascinated at how Pelosi could do this to America's best ally in Latin America, punishing a vibrant democracy by isolating it from all the other nations that have sought and won free trade.
Unlike, say, military aid, this deal costs the U.S. nothing, is too small to have much impact on the U.S. economy and is mainly about ending tariffs on U.S. goods sold in Colombia, matching the no-tariff trade that Colombian firms already get here.
Free trade was what Chavez's enemy, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, considered his best weapon. And Pelosi knocked it right out of his hand, just to placate her party's union supporters.
Only a month ago, Chavez sent 10 tank divisions to the Colombian border after Colombia's army blew away a FARC terrorist kingpin. He warned he would bring war inside Colombia.
Encircled by tanks not only in the East by Venezuela but also in the South by Chavez's cat's paw, Ecuador, Colombia asked the U.S. for just one thing: to pass the free-trade agreement. No tanks. No jets. Just free trade.
Now without it, Chavez might be emboldened to strike. After all, he'll hear from congressional sources that Pelosi probably won't bring up a vote on the trade pact for at least several months. He'll use that time to pick fights with its now-forsaken neighbor. The fact that Colombia can't get even a trade pact tells him all he needs to know about American commitment.
So even though the pact was not rejected outright, its absence will be inherently destabilizing. There's nothing Chavez or his FARC allies dread more than Colombia armed with trade rights that will boost its economy beyond the allure of Chavista populist promises.
At Argentina's 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Chavez made his enmity toward free trade known by hurling insults at the president of Mexico and vowing to "bury" free trade.
Now, thanks to Pelosi's bid to shunt Colombia off to trade limbo, the potential for war in a tinderbox Andean region — over any border incident or FARC terrorist attack — has been heightened.
The world and its dictators don't sleep. The cowardly number that Pelosi did on Colombia likely will prevent the soft power of free trade from working, instead opening the gates to the hard power of war — and pulling in the U.S. whether Pelosi likes it or not. If so, we'll have the her to thank.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=292719840548572
