April 23, 2007

Gore’s Hypocritical Human Rights Stance Towards Colombia

by Garry Leech

Former Vice-President Al Gore has again exhibited a degree of political hypocrisy that is simply astounding. Last week, he continued his personal quest to re-cast himself as the leading spokesperson for the mainstream left in the United States when he cancelled a scheduled appearance as the keynote speaker at a conference on the environment because Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe was also on the program. The problem, according to a statement issued by Gore, is that he finds accusations that Uribe is linked to right-wing paramilitary death squads “deeply troubling” and doesn’t want to appear with the Colombian president until “this very serious chapter in history is brought to a close.” However, when Gore was vice-president he apparently had no interest in bringing “this very serious chapter in history” to a close.

Where were Gore’s noble proclamations in defense of human rights when he was vice-president in the administration that made Colombia the world’s third-largest recipient of US military aid? This aid was provided to Colombia even though international human rights groups and the US State Department’s own annual human rights reports had documented the Colombian army’s close ties to the same right-wing paramilitaries whose alleged links to Uribe led Gore to so nobly snub the Colombian president last week.

In 1999, the Clinton-Gore administration formulated Plan Colombia and then publicly announced the militaristic, multi-billion dollar, counter-narcotics initiative in January 2000. At the time, Gore owned almost $500,000 worth of stock in Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, which was one of the most ardent lobbyists for Plan Colombia and one of the US companies that stood to benefit from an escalated US military role in the South American nation. At that time, Gore repeatedly refused to respond to questions from reporters about his links to Occidental Petroleum. He also failed to make mention of any human rights concerns regarding the US funding of a military closely linked to paramilitary death squads.

At the time that the Clinton-Gore administration formulated Plan Colombia, there was already a wealth of evidence documenting the collusion between the Colombian military and the paramilitaries. In 1996, Human Rights Watch published an extensive report titled, Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States, which documented in detail how the Colombian military worked closely with the paramilitaries to wage a dirty war against the civilian population. The report explained how the Colombian army established paramilitary groups in northern Colombia and described numerous massacres that were perpetrated by the paramilitaries with the aid of state security forces. There were many other individuals and groups at that time who were also documenting the Colombian army’s links to the paramilitaries. Six months before Plan Colombia was implemented, an investigative piece published by one of Colombia’s leading daily newspapers detailed how the Colombian army aided the paramilitaries in the massacre of 49 peasants in the southeastern village of Mapiripán in 1997.

The Clinton-Gore administration did not even have to go to outside sources to learn about the Colombian army’s links to the paramilitaries, its own State Department’s annual human rights report for 1999—the year Plan Colombia was conceived—pointed out that Colombia’s “security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups that committed abuses; in some instances, individual members of the security forces actively collaborated with members of paramilitary groups by passing them through roadblocks, sharing intelligence, and providing them with ammunition. Paramilitary forces find a ready support base within the military and police, as well as local civilian elites in many areas.” And yet, there wasn’t a peep out of Vice-President Gore at that time regarding Colombia’s human rights situation.

Perhaps Gore’s noble human rights stance last week represents a re-evaluation of his attitude towards Colombia’s official complicity with paramilitary death squads. More likely though, it is just another politically expedient move on his part. After all, in his 1992 book titled Earth in the Balance, Gore wrote about how global warming represented the biggest threat to human beings and nobly declared, “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.” And yet, after positioning himself as a champion of environmentalism, he then became vice-president and did little to address that threat.

Under the Clinton-Gore administration, more old growth forest was cut down than under any other US government in recent history, despite the value of those forests in combating global warming. The Clinton-Gore administration also caved in to conservative Democrats and the automobile industry by scrapping plans to toughen fuel efficiency requirements. Despite the doom-and-gloom declarations he made prior to becoming vice-president, Gore did little to address global warming during his eight years in office. And now that he is out of office and no longer in a position to actually implement regulations that could combat global warming, Gore is once again portraying himself as Mr. Environmentalist.

There is little reason to believe that Gore has any more integrity with regard to human rights than he has with environmental issues. In fact, his attitude towards human rights reflects his attitude towards the environment, which appears to change depending on whether or not he is holding public office. During his tenure as vice-president, Gore never once questioned US aid going to a military closely allied to right-wing paramilitary death squads. However, as with the environment, Gore talks a good line about human rights when he is not in office.

As an elected official, Gore chose to repeatedly serve the interests of corporate America, including those of oil companies such as Occidental Petroleum, whose activities are closely related to both human rights abuses in Colombia and global warming. Colombia’s President Uribe deserves to be taken to task for his government’s links to paramilitary death squads. However, it is difficult to rally around a political opportunist like Al Gore whose own hands are covered in Colombian blood.

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