FARC's Real Aim: Ending Democracy

International pressure is building on Colombia to negotiate with FARC terrorists to free hostages. But that's just emboldening these killers. They now demand an end to democracy. A harder hand is needed.

The sneering leaders of the FARC Marxist terrorists declared that their group would be glad to release all 750 of FARC's hostages with just one condition: that Colombia's elected President Alvaro Uribe and his entire government resign.

"The immediate resignation of Uribe and his government could guarantee the live release of the prisoners through a humanitarian accord without any obstacles," FARC "commander" Raul Reyes told Anncol, the Denmark-based FARC newswire.

It was ironic, because Uribe, unlike FARC, leads Colombia as a democratically elected leader whose tough stance on terrorists has not only strengthened Colombia's democracy but made him a national hero, with an 80% approval rating.

It's no small thing. Fighting a long terror war often weakens democracies. Peru's President Alberto Fujimori fought a similar war against the Shining Path in the 1990s at a big cost to democracy — a cost which, given the alternative, Peruvians were willing to pay.

Uribe however, has kept Colombia's democracy through "democratic security" while bringing vast swaths of peace to Colombia's cities and highways, "literally changing our lives," as a British Petroleum oil engineer recently told us at a Bogota taxi stop.

Uribe did it with military force, not concessions.

But that's not stopping pressure on Uribe from a chaotic mishmash of international efforts to persuade the FARC to free at least 45 hostages in exchange for letting 500 FARC terrorists off scot-free. This idea has galvanized Europe and elsewhere.

"If Uribe resigns, it will guarantee the humanitarian accord and I agree with that," said Juan Carlos Lecompte, husband of Franco-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt.

We understand the emotion, but it's still an outrageous statement.

No nation can negate itself to free hostages. Europe has a long tradition of negotiating with terrorists, and apparently sees Colombia's democracy as a cheap concession.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has exerted a lot of pressure on Uribe's government for a swap, although his international pressure on FARC, over Uribe, is largely useless.

Far worse are the think tanks and hostage families who seek Hugo Chavez's return as the "only" potential mediator for the hostages' release. Uribe quickly recognized that Chavez seeks to destabilize Colombia just as surely as the FARC does. No coincidence: FARC and Chavez have the same patron: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Meanwhile, Chavez-praising U.S. Democrat congressmen from Massachusetts, like Bill Delahunt and Jim McGovern, also are pressuring Uribe. These two succeeded in slashing U.S. military aid to Colombia by an estimated 30% in 2008, ensuring that Uribe will have a hard time fighting. They also have undercut Colombia by opposing its free trade pact, while propping up Hugo Chavez by voting against any bill to drill oil to make the U.S. independent of him.

Now they are pressuring Colombia through their own private diplomatic effort. El Tiempo reported they have written letters to FARC's leading terrorist, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, and Venezuelan dictator Chavez, thanking both for their role in the supposed release of three hostages to Chavez. This will only raise the pressure on Uribe further by empowering Chavez.

Not only does FARC want Colombia's democracy to die, it also wants Uribe to die. FARC has tried to kill the elected president some 100 times. In 2002, it even fired mortars at Colombia's presidential palace. FARC killed Uribe's father in 1983, and they tried to kidnap Uribe's sons just two weeks ago. That's who they are.

They're also the world's biggest cocaine traffickers, and the world's foremost user of landmines. They use child soldiers, often kidnapped children, and they have incinerated whole villages for refusing to help them. In 1998 they nearly took over the capital.

Terrorists like this cannot be negotiated with. FARC is little different from al-Qaida in its quest to amass power through violence against innocents, not the ballot box.

Democracies cannot survive this. If FARC refuses to free hostages except at the price of Colombia's democracy, then the sad fact is that the hostages must be expendable.

FARC doesn't need soothing words and concessions; it needs to fear that a far greater force will be used on them than already has been. Doubling Colombia's military aid would be far more effective than freelance diplomacy, which only undermines democracy.