Blindly Applying Plan Colombia

Nick Miroff wrote an article in the Washington Post about Plan Colombia, which although it cites dissenting voices, has an overall message of success. Boz gives some more context about how "success" is achieved (e.g. negotiations are sometimes required).

The problem is that I think the context gets drowned out. Just as Russell Crandall wrote about using El Salvador as a model, Plan Colombia gets widely seen as something that can be easily applied elsewhere (like Afghanistan). The structure of the conflict, the nature of the government, the high human costs, all these get ignored.