US involvement in Columbian raid into Ecuador
Actually Colombia made their assault in Ecuador, not Venezuela, so I am not sure about sending some message to Chavez to police his territory.
And it seems to me that if we were involved what limited benefit we get from knocking out a handful of FARC people (there are thousands of them) is offset by the fact that Chavez and others get to holler about US meddling in South American affairs which most of the countries down there resent.
There are militant groups like FARC all over the world. Some of them are terrorists, some of these groups view themselves as revolutionaries as did our forefathers. I dont know enough to know which ones have legitimate causes and which ones do not. From what little I know about FARC, they are bad guys if for no other reason because of their kidnapping escapades.
I dont see the benefit to us getting involved in these fights, particularly when it involves one country crossing borders into another.
I also wonder who approves this type of action. Does it go up to the president? Can the president, without approval from congress, involve us in what might be consdiered an act of war? Suppose Spain and Portugal were at odds, could the president approve a clandestine operation wherein we helped the Portuguese make a military strike in Spain? how would that be different than helping Colombia mount a militray raid in Ecuador(if we did)?
Congress has allowed itself to become almost irrelevant in the checks and balances equation.
It's all quite simple. We get involved in these things out of a combination of hubris and graft. Our government really believes it can control these groups and governments and successfully orchestrate the puppet strings according to the benefit of American economic and financial interests.
Why they stubbornly cling to this behavior I do not know because the historical record shows quite the opposite. The keystone cops could do just as well in the way of geopolitical manipulation.
Involvement also reflects the economic interests of powerful lobbies who bankroll Congress. Again this is the oil lobby I refer to. U.S. companies have many oil contracts with Colombia. FARC could be seen as a threat to this arrangement because I would imagine of they were able to gain power they would nationalize the oil and take a similar tack to Chavez.
FARC also has targeted oil pipelines in the past and disrupted production in Colombia. In current circumstances any incidents even in a mid-tier producer like Colombia can spook the market and propel oil pries even higher. In this economic environment, that is quite dangerous to the US economy. We are already teetering.
So, rather than deal with risk in the world marketplace, the oil lobby will get the Pentagon to insure their investment. The best thing about this is, so far as we know, Colombian forces are the proxy here and we are not directly involved with combat troops on the ground.
I'm ambivalent about this one so long as we are as vulnerable to oil shocks as we currently are. I can see supporting the government of Colombia and trying to help them protect Colombian oil infrastructure from FARC. We don;t have much of a choice right now. But I would avoid deep direct involvement. It always creates more problems than it solves.
Ultimately here we are back to the addiction to oil that keeps us meddling in oil producing coutries and the natural tendencies of special interests to capture government resources in support of their own special projects.