Last week Donald Trump announced he was imposing sanctions on the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, as well as his wife and son. This appeared to be retaliation for Petro’s running public criticism of the military buildup Trump has ordered in the Caribbean, with the stated intent of fighting “Narco Terrorists” — at least 43 of whom have now been summarily executed. And which anyone with two brain cells knows is really about coercing regime change in Venezuela, not some drop-in-the-bucket effort at drug interdiction. After all, Trump has openly acknowledged that he’s dispatched the CIA to physically infiltrate Venezuela, and curiously refrained from denouncing the New York Times for reporting this top-secret information — a rare “leak” from inside the Administration he was happy to amplify, rather than castigate as “Fake News.”
President Petro clearly doesn’t like the US military presence rapidly building in the region, and he’s already been loudly criticizing Trump on a host of other issues. So now Trump responds in kind, with the imposition of punitive sanctions. Which is a strange power for the US to even have in the first place. Radical and limitless use of sanctions has become such a commonplace feature of US governance that hardly anyone bats an eye about it anymore, but it really is a striking historical anomaly. By the letter of “international law,” sanctions are only supposed to be applied when the UN Security Council authorizes them, otherwise they are rogue “unilateral” sanctions. But of course, this has never stopped the US from freely putting sanctions on whomever it wants, whenever it wants, by virtue of its position as untrammeled global hegemon — and the brute force it can thus bring to bear when a desired target is identified. Yet another example of why invoking “international law” is almost always a silly red herring, with little or no practical import, and mostly functions as a pointless thought-experiment for people devoid of power to busy themselves with. Separate and apart from “international law,” though, it testifies to the endurance of US supremacy that the President can just wake up one morning and decree unilateral sanctions against a foreign head of state, as well as his family, and this won’t just be a mere symbolic gesture — unlike, say, if Colombia tried to unilaterally “sanction” Trump. Petro has already bewailed that he’s been frozen out of Colombian banks, which of course must enforce these sanctions if they wish to remain in good standing with the US-dominated global financial system.
And this isn’t the first “sanction” the US has retributively inflicted on Petro. He already had his visa revoked during the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly last month, when he flitted around Manhattan holding street protests against the US-Israeli war in Gaza. I actually saw him give a speech on September 26 at the NYC Society for Ethical Culture. The speech was all in Spanish, but event organizers helpfully distributed translation devices. Clocking in at ~90 minutes, the speech was winding and unstructured; the ostensible topic was Gaza, but he also meandered into digressions on a variety of other topics, such as Napoleon, Hitler, Hegelian dialectics (which I’d guess most people in the room would’ve pretended to be extremely well-versed in), and a Hungarian philosopher whose name he appeared to forget, or was unable to pronounce, but whose masterwork he paraphrased as “The Assault Against Reason,” according to the English translator. Presumably, Petro had meant “The Destruction of Reason” by György Lukács (1954).
Then by whatever circuitous route, Petro ended up lamenting how Stalin had “abandoned the real revolutions” in Italy and Spain, and he chastised the French for thinking “they own science.” Amidst these historical tangents, Petro made a special point to inform us of an interesting fact that he said was “not well known,” which is that the first non-natives who “set foot on American soil were Arabs.” Because in antiquity, he explained, parts of Spain were conquered by Arabs — and thus their descendants were the ones who first voyaged to the Americas. Therefore, the people of Colombia are keenly aware that “we have Arab blood,” which in modern times continues to be “reflected in our dance, architecture” and other notable customs. Petro’s unexpected detour into left-wing “Blood and Soil” theory was apparently intended to emphasize the intrinsic connection between Colombia and Gaza, and to illustrate why he decided Gaza was of such outsized importance to him as the President of Colombia.
A telling moment came when Petro recounted, somewhat wistfully, that “when I talk about Palestine in Colombia, Colombians say, why don’t you talk about Colombia.” It sounded like he might be about to expand on the implications of this conundrum, but then he cut himself off, said “nevermind,” and moved on to the next topic. It was an intriguing question though: what the nation of Colombia, represented by its boisterous left-wing president, can realistically do about “genocide” in Gaza — and why this should be a top priority for ordinary Colombians. Possibly it could have merited some further interrogation. But this was a speech, rather than a dialogue, and the audience composed mostly of left-wing New Yorkers sat idly enraptured.
The solution Petro proposed for stopping the “genocide” was multifold. “The time for revolution has come,” he announced, “so that the Gaza genocide stops.” Evidently, no “revolution” was required to bring about the cessation in hostilities that Trump and his emissaries wound up brokering just a few weeks later. Dubious as that “deal” might be — not least because Trump declared himself the ultimate governing authority in Gaza, with Tony Blair as his viceroy, and with Jared Kushner presiding over the real estate planning — it’s at least put a (temporary?) halt to what had been, at the time of Petro’s speech, an active and unremitting Israeli pulverization campaign. On the other hand, Petro was calling for the formation of a new international military bloc, consisting of Colombia and unidentified likeminded states, who would stage their own intervention to liberate Gaza — by declaring war on Israel and the United States. “If we win in Gaza,” he explained, “we can also win against climate change.” Some might have wondered if this plan was slightly impractical.
The presumed causal connection between “winning” in Gaza and “winning” against “climate change” was apparently something that required no further elaboration in the context of a pro-Palestine gathering at the NYC Society for Ethical Culture — where to mishmash various left-wing dogmas, without any thought to clarify the claimed logical underpinnings, came just as naturally as paying sweet homage to Assata Shakur, whose death had been announced earlier in the day. Shakur, a former Black Panther, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973, and fled to Cuba. “Assata Libre!” one of the speakers cried out, after Petro had finally wrapped up and was hustled offstage by his crew of Colombian bodymen. (“Some Colombian men are actually quite handsome,” he’d remarked during the speech.)
It’s true that attitudes toward Israel have soured dramatically in the American electorate, most glaringly among Democrats, of whom only 12% said in a recent poll that they “sympathize” with Israel over the Palestinians. Republican support for Israel has proven significantly more enduring, but still shows signs of waning at the margins. Whatever these recent shifts in public opinion, though, one can’t help but suspect that they’ve almost been in spite of the sort of activist ardor on display at such places as the NYC Society for Ethical Culture. Yes, the continued prevalence of COVID mask-wearing at any left-wing function, and therefore any pro-Palestine function, does suggest an outsized prevalence of mental illness. “Y’all, we have nothing to lose but our chains,” one speaker said. Then there’s Gustavo Petro, musing about how “a policy of love” will make it possible to “reach the stars,” and will also make it possible to constitute “the very first army of humanity” — both to rescue the inhabitants of Gaza, and to cool the warming oceans. Petro further proclaimed he will not allow the Colombian people to be relegated to “concentration camps, waiting to be taken to the gas chamber,” though it was not entirely clear who he imagined would be trying to mass-exterminate the Colombians. Trump? “This is a man who is irrational,” Petro opined. “This is a man who does not deserve to lead this country.” Both arguable points, perhaps, but neither did Petro exactly come across as the picture of rational leadership.
“I think we should take the Statue of Liberty with us,” Petro said, referring to his scheduled departure from the United States. “I hope they don’t arrest me.” Yes, the remark was largely in jest; he’d have no means to execute a theft of the Statue of Liberty, backed as he might be by the mighty Colombian armed forces, which elsewhere he had envisioned as capable of launching a ground incursion in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the cheeky proposal was met with sustained applause.
“The president of Colombia is a drug dealer,” Trump has said of Petro. “Trump repeats Goebbels’ words,” Petro said of Trump. At the same time, Petro also stressed that whatever his grievances with the current US president, he maintains utmost reverence for American traditions and iconography: “I’m not really religious to be honest, but I do respect human heroism and human history. I do not burn the American flag.”
Trump does seem to think he has criminalized flag-burning by executive fiat, even though this would clearly run afoul of Supreme Court precedent, and is not even what’s provided for in the Executive Order he recently issued on the matter. Which he almost certainly didn’t read. Regardless, Petro at least having the sense to refrain from endorsing any flag desecration might have been seen as a tentative point in his favor. Alas, Marco Rubio’s State Department swiftly revoked his visa anyway (perhaps jeopardizing US neutrality as host of the United Nations, which requires permitting heads of state to come and go as they please.) Now, with the imposition of personalized sanctions, Petro’s been doubly battered. He stands accused by the US Treasury Department of exhibiting “erratic behavior” (true enough) and giving safe harbor to “narco-terrorist organizations” (less obvious). Arguably most foreboding for Petro is that he’s accused of having “allied himself with the narco-terrorist regime of Nicolas Maduro” — against whom the US is currently mobilizing for war. While they’re at it, the Trump Administration could plausibly see the utility in knocking off Venezuela’s nuisance of a neighbor.
Petro has already signaled fantastical levels of confidence in Colombia’s military prowess, fancying himself a wartime leader of some revolutionary escapade in Gaza. So who knows what his plan might be in the event of a bonafide US invasion, which has been steadily building in the region for weeks, and has already been presaged by a maritime killing spree the Administration is raining down on what it calls “terrorists” — bombing hapless boatmen to smithereens, without meaningful disclosure of any incriminating evidence, much less any Congressional authorization. (The body theoretically vested with war-declaring powers, known as the US House of Representatives, is indefinitely adjourned anyway on a weeks-long “government shutdown” — the basis for which no one seems to quite understand.)
Should he be confronted anytime soon with the barrel of an American gun, I will always be humbled that at least for that one glorious evening, I may have borne witness to the slipshod revolutionary fervor of President Gustavo Petro. When he exited the stage, the gathered masses erupted into their favorite call-and-response chant, suited for any occasion with its catchy rhythmic cadence: “From the River to the Sea! Palestine Will Be Free!” Ironically, no chanters had the foresight to come up with any emancipatory rhymes about imminent hostilities in the Caribbean Sea.
It’s all about Israel. Petro is one of the strongest voices out there against Israel. Trump is Israel first.
"Yes, the continued prevalence of COVID mask-wearing at any left-wing function, and therefore any pro-Palestine function, does suggest an outsized prevalence of mental illness."
I had wondered whether anyone else had noticed this.