It explains very well why this simplistic "sound bite" of yours is wrong.
Continuing from the OP:
This type of vilification – designating any political opposition, even if peaceful, as somehow linked to the guerillas — is a long-standing tactic of the U.S. and Colombian government to justify their own brutality. And, sadly, this tactic is quite effective even at misleading the U.S. left and progressive forces, and in convincing them to refrain from supporting struggles which deserve to be supported.
An example of this phenomenon which I have personal knowledge of involves the peasant union in Colombia known as FENSUAGRO, the second largest union in Colombia. FENSUAGRO has a long and proud history of peaceful resistance in Colombia and is one of the most outspoken groups in support of a negotiated peace process with the guerillas. And, FENSUAGRO has paid dearly for its activism. Thus, 5 out of the 11 unionists killed this year in Colombia have been from FENSUAGRO. One of these unionists, Herman Henry Diaz, was disappeared, only his clothes found on a road connecting two different military bases. FENSUAGRO believes that Mr. Diaz was killed by the military which controls the area in which he was taken, but, without a body, the truth will probably never be known.
On my recent visit to Colombia, the President of FENSUAGRO, Eberto Diaz Montes, talked to me about the violence against his union. He explained that FENSUAGRO has lost 1500 members to murder — almost exclusively at the hands of the Colombian military and its paramilitary allies. As for the paramilitaries, Eberto, in agreement with former Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran, attributes their rise and domination of large swaths of Colombian territory to the support they received from Chiquita Bananas from 1997 to 2004 – support which totaled $1.7 million and included 3,000 kalashnikov rifles. These same Chiquita-sponsored paramilitaries murdered and displaced scores of FENSUAGRO’s members who were living and working in the banana region which Chiquita forcefully took over in the late 1990’s.
The number of killings suffered by FENSUAGRO is staggering, accounting for around half of all unionists killed in Colombia (over 2900 since 1986). And, given that Colombia leads the world in trade union killings, it is fair to say that FENSUAGRO is the most endangered union in the world.
--from the OP (my emphases)
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You need to acknowledge WHO is being murdered in this region--entirely peaceful trade unionists and peasants--and WHO is doing the murdering (also corroborated by Amnesty International)--the U.S. funded/trained Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (about half and half, according to AI)--and WHO are the beneficiaries: U.S. corporations, U.S. war profiteers and Colombia's wealthy landowners and fascist militarists and politicians, who have used this "scorched earth" policy to prep Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich."
You need to follow events (or perhaps you do) and grasp that the U.S. and its fascist allies in Colombia have sabotaged every effort to bring about peace in Colombia's 70 year (!) civil war, including recent efforts (which occurred during the Bush Junta). This is NOT about a country defending its "sovereign territory" against leftist guerillas. It is about wholesale murder and mega land theft and oppression by the rich against the poor. It is about eliminating trade unions and other advocates of the poor. And it is about the gross misuse of U.S. tax dollars to support a corrupt fascist establishment in Colombia who have stolen the lands of five million peasant farmers by brutal displacement policies designed in Washington DC!
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