by Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial editor, Washington Post
The Obama administration is about to lose an extraordinary opportunity to prosecute one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers. It will fail to break up a network that annually smuggles hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States. And it will miss delivering a devastating blow to the most dedicated U.S. adversary in Latin America, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
You wouldn’t have known that from watching the White House meeting last week of Presidents Obama and Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. They gathered to celebrate the completion of an “action plan” that could lead, maybe, to congressional ratification of a long-stalled free trade treaty between Colombia and the United States. Remarkably, they said nothing in public about the judgment of no-confidence Santos has made about Obama — a product of Obama’s previous neglect of a valuable ally.
In fact, the U.S.-Colombian trade plan, which leaves the treaty several steps from ratification, may matter less than the decision Santos announced two days before reaching Washington. The democratically elected Colombian leader is a graduate of the University of Kansas and a lifelong friend of the United States. He nevertheless confirmed that he will deliver a man named Walid Makled Garcia, whom Colombia arrested last August on a U.S. warrant, to his native Venezuela rather than to the United States.
Full story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why_isnt_obama_fighting_colombias_dirty_deal/2011/04/07/AFGdwrGD_story.html