Colombia Rising

“Somehow, in the decade in which Iraq and Afghanistan fell into anarchy, Colombia emerged out of it. It is the one success story of the ‘war on terror.’ Alvaro Uribe, who in August stepped down as president after eight years in office, is probably the most popular man in the country. … What made the real difference was that, from 2000, the Bush administration poured billions of dollars into the Colombian military, transforming it into an effective fighting force which adopted counterinsurgency as its doctrine. These days attributed to General David Petraeus, counterinsurgency was the intellectual basis for the surge in Iraq. But the Colombian military did it first and better.”