Cocaine Jihad

Colombian authorities announced today that they have broken up a drug and money-laundering ring that apparently financed Hezbollah terrorists:

More than 100 suspects were arrested in Colombia and overseas on charges they trafficked drugs and laundered cash for Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel and for outlawed paramilitaries in a network that stretched from South America to Asia, the attorney’s general office said.

“The criminal organisation used routes through Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Middle East and Europe, bringing in cash from the sale of these substances,” the statement said.

Among those arrested in Colombia were three people suspected of coordinating drug smuggling to send some of their profits to groups such as Hezbollah, the office said.

Those suspects — Chekry Mahmoud Harb, Ali Mohamad Abdul Rahim and Zacaria Hussein Harb — used front companies to send drug cash overseas, it said without providing further details.

Mahmoud, Mohamad and Hussein–not the names we traditionally associate with Latin American drug smugglers. What we’re seeing here, I think, is another sign of the emerging Russia/Iran/Venezuela axis. This unholy alliance could be the major foreign policy challenge of the next four years.

If that’s right, it is dispiriting to realize that we likely will have a President so hostile to America’s ally Colombia that he doesn’t want American manufacturers to be able to sell their goods there free of tariffs. Nor are we sure what his attitude is toward our bitter enemy, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. If he’s ever been critical of Chavez, who refers to the President of the United States as “the Devil,” I haven’t seen it. Moreover, in 2006 Obama’s friend and collaborator Bill Ayers traveled to Venezuela to address Chavez and fellow party members as “comrades” and praise Venezuelan education because it is thoroughly politicized and endeavors to perpetuate socialism. Ayers said that he wants American education to follow that socialist model. Who has funded Ayers’ radical educational projects? Barack Obama.

It would be nice if, during the next four years, we had a President who 1) understands who are America’s friends and who are America’s enemies, and 2) is on the side of America and its friends. Right now, that doesn’t seem likely.

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