simonmd

Not directly comparable for two important reasons:

The Good Friday Agreement was signed before the Rome Statutes on War Crimes came into effect (in no small part as a response to similar "blank-slate" deals in the 80's and early 90's). That means that signatory countries are bound by international law to prosecute and punish war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after their signing, proportionally to the severity of the crime. That's what I mean by first-world justice. Even in Ireland, no crimes under the Rome statute after 2002 can be met with the level of impunity the FARC-Santos deal guarantees.

And with respect to McGuinness, even if the Rome statute had been in effect during his participation in the IRA, he was never charged with anything resembling a war crime, even after the Saville Inquiry. He would be more akin to a member of the shady, FARC-friendly political party "Marcha Patriotica". The crimes of the FARC leadership, on the other hand, are fully documented, and sentenced in-absentia. Most of them have over 400 years of cumulative sentences, including murder, extortion, torture, kidnapping, child recruitment etc. All constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

We would be ok with granting amnesty to lower level FARC scientists, but the Hitlers, Eichmanns, Goebbelses, Goerings, Heydrichs, Himmlers, Hoesses and Mengeles of the FARC must see some jail time.

And colombians did, last sunday.

Guerrillas were created because justice was not applied when crimes were committed against their founders. Paramilitaries were created because the state did not apply justice or provide security to victims of guerilla crimes. Most of the problems colombia has faced during the past 50 years are not due to guerrillas or paramilitaries, but because we as a society apparently find justice to be an 'obstacle' to other ends, large and small.

Really? which convicted war criminal holds office? If you say 'Bush' you didn't really read my comment. I fully support him being investigated for war crimes. But until he is convicted, that is a non-sequitur.

Name ONE developed country that would accept zero jail time and political eligibility for someone convicted of multiple war crimes, with hundreds of years in cumulative prison sentences.

That is precisely my point. You are just one of many colombians who can't seem to make the connection between repeatedly helping criminals dodge justice and Colombia's current situation.

This is just another version of the white savior complex. Developed countries support 'peace' processes that make them feel good about themselves, with little regard for the root causes of the conflict to begin with. Apparently they think us colombians are too backwards to deserve first-world justice, so they applaud compromises that they would NEVER accept themselves.

Who is 'they' exactly? Expecting justice hardly makes me an 'Uribista'.

If you stop your constitutional obligation to combat crime, OBVIOUSLY there will be fewer deaths in combat. That does not make it right.

And of course, in typical izquierdista fashion, you justify your arguments by turning it into a class warfare statement, even grouping me with computer scientists (I am not) from La Javeriana (fine private university, but I'm also not from there).

FARC apologists will always find a way to make everything about Uribe. All manners of crime are justified because 'Uribe did it first'. Colombian leftists are nothing if not hypocritical.

There was no 'stalemate'. FARC in 2010 were 5000 strong, taking heavy losses and on the run. Then came Santos, who obsessed over winning international recognition that has eluded him at home, legitimized FARC, gave them an international stage and set in motion a 6 year 'peace process' that has left FARC in congress and senate, with all their crimes whitewashed, and with our already weak justice system mortally wounded.

The Union and Confederate armies both had around 200,000 soldiers each in 1861. That is a war on equal terms. FARC guerillas are about 17,000 now (about 5000 in 2010, before this 'peace process'). The colombian army is 500,000 plus 40 million regular citizens who despise FARC. The situation is quite different from US post-civil war reconstruction efforts.