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November 25, 2021

Joe Biden coddles another terrorist group — and Florida's Democrats are screaming

By Monica Showalter

As if dealing with the Taliban as a "partner" and taking the Houthis off the terrorist watch list weren't enough, Joe Biden has decided to succor another terrorist group: FARC.

Most people don't remember them, but these were the vile Marxist narco-terrorists who terrorized Colombia for 60 years and then got off scot-free based on a "peace deal" from a lousy Colombian president whose hankering for a Nobel prize was so strong that he literally ignored a popular referendum rejecting such a deal.  They had good reason: in FARC's war on that country, 200,000 people were killed, and two million were displaced as refugees in their own country.  Want to know where shantytowns come from?  Yes, the displaced.  Millions more fled the country, leaving it a bleak, impoverished landscape.

FARC's depravities against individuals were unspeakable, and every Colombian was touched by them.  I recall the plaintive signs in Bogota windows and the scrawlings on church walls from locals begging FARC to return their missing and kidnapped loved ones.  To describe just one incident Americans may remember vaguely, FARC's inhuman monsters (and if you read this book, they most certainly were monsters) held three innocent Americans hostage for five and a half years in chains in the disease-filled Colombian jungle, enduring privation and torture until they were spectacularly rescued in 2007.  They shot two others dead in cold blood, including a fourth American.  FARC, which pioneered car bombs, child soldiers, child rape, child kidnapping, child torture, a war on the family, burning churches with terrified people in them, school attacks, disco attacks, ransom kidnapping, dancing around with their hero Fidel Castro, and other depravities was pretty much a combination of al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Mexican cartels, Castro's guerrillas, and Bill Ayers.  Naturally, such a horrible group was caught taking millions from Hugo Chávez, who adored what they were doing.  But for the rest of us, and most certainly any Colombian, FARC is one of the most depraved groups on the planet.

That brings us back to Biden and his disgusting act of taking FARC off the terror watch list, which is being done, according to the Wall Street Journal, in order to give FARC money.  FARC not only will get U.S. cash, but will be free to have U.S. bank accounts and raise money in the U.S. from adoring leftists.  Like the Houthis, who immediately attacked a U.S. embassy and took hostages right after Joe removed them from the terror watch list, they'll likely return to terror.

Turns out Colombians don't like it.  That includes Colombians in the U.S., many of whom have become naturalized citizens.  Those Colombians can be found all over, but they mostly live in Florida, some 150,000 of them.  Many, but not all, vote Democrat.  Many have elected Colombian-American Democrats to represent them.  Many have been moving toward Republicans anyway, particularly with Colombia's great (and very popular) president, Alvaro Uribe, openly praising President Trump.  And this Biden act is going over like a lead balloon, which should have some electoral consequences for Democrats in Florida.

FARC to Colombians is what Castro is to Miami's Cubans and the Chávez-Maduro dictatorship is to Miami's Venezuelans.  And it turns out that Colombians are very numerous.  And Florida's Democrats are alarmed.

Here's one, a local pol of Colombian descent who is running for governor against Gov. Ron DeSantis:

Here's the Democrat mayor of Miami, not a Latina that I can tell, but a fluent Spanish-speaker in tune with what Latinos are saying:

Here's a Democrat strategist quoted by Politico in a piece titled "Biden Colombia plan stirs up Florida hornets nest":

Longtime Democratic activist Carolina Castillo, however, said she has seen more and more of her family members and neighbors leave the Democratic Party because so many in "the progressive left" of the local party have become supportive of Marxist leaders in Latin America.

"It's a betrayal, a clear betrayal," Castillo said. "We wanted a strong president who was going to stand for democracy, but here we are giving power to the extreme leftists in Colombia and the timing couldn't be worse. This will only help bring more Colombian families to the Republican side."

They know FARC.  They know what FARC does.

So does pretty much everyone else in Florida.  Get a load of the reaction from the other local political and community leaders in Florida, all saying the right things:

And these Florida public relations experts' readings:

That is one ugly move on Joe Biden's part, born of his ever-continuing desire to please the radical left.  Now he's got pretty much everyone in Florida mad at him, including local Democrats, and yes, he's thrown fat on the fire that is moving the Latino vote over to the Republican column for 2022.  Why anyone would think FARC deserves recognition, cash, or any succor after the failures of the U.S. to sweet-talk the Taliban into dealing with them, or the succor to the Houthis, who responded with violence, is a mystery.  FARC will be no better than these odious characters, and there's reason to think, as Ted Cruz and other Senate Republicans have observed, that they will be a threat to the U.S. as a result.

What does Joe gain from this?  The love of the radical far left and its NGO allies, and pretty much no one else.  He should be prepared for a message from Florida come 2022 and 2024.

Image: Desconocido (cuadrado por Juan Pablo Arancibia Medina) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5.

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