Latin America and Islamic terrorism

Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a good discussion of the latest U.S. military claim about how Latin America is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. He cites an article I published last year about how the U.S. suddenly found terrorism everywhere in Latin America after 9/11 and every so often we’re told there’s more. The U.S. government does a pretty good job of finding Islamic terrorists everywhere it looks (they’re smuggling nukes from Mexico across the Arizona desert, etc.).

One unfortunate result is that such talk accumulates and becomes a rationale for intervention of some kind. Another unfortunate result is that, like the boy who cried wolf, in the unlikely event there ever is a real threat no one will believe it.

Coincidentally, the CIA is honoring one of its dismally failed past efforts to intervene by hanging on oil painting depicting the Bay of Pigs invasion.

''The fact that the overall [Bay of Pigs] operation didn't achieve its objectives in no way diminishes the lasting example of courage of those who risked -- and in some cases gave -- their lives to support it,'' agency spokesman George Little said of the Bay of Pigs painting.

Titled Lobo Flight, the 40- by 30-inch painting shows a vintage B-26 twin engine bomber flown by Connie Seigrist -- the lead pilot of a convoy of B-26s painted to look like Cuban aircraft -- dropping bombs onto a column of Cuban troops heading to the beach, where a group of CIA-trained Cuban exiles had landed to attempt to overthrow Castro.

Perhaps this is part of an exhibit entitled “Ways in Which We’ve Made Our Enemies Stronger by Attacking Them.” Or maybe part of the “How Overheated Rhetoric Leads to Disastrous Invasions” series.