Viva Uribe! FARC Chavez.

Who says you can't win an insurgency?

Yesterday brought yet another victory for Columbian President Alvaro Uribe in his stunningly successful effort to smash the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC: Time. But because this is a Marxist group, and Uribe is seen as a "conservative" who may be the Bush administration's best (and only?) friend in Latin America, expect the applause to be muted in certain circles.

Time's story engages in a little revisionist spin when it notes that FARC "even lost the enthusiasm of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an unabashed FARC sympathizer who had brokered the release of a handful of other hostages this year." But Chavez only lost his enthusiasm for FARC recently, after the Columbians (with low key U.S. help) began kicking the crap out of the group -- and after Uribe called the Venezuelan dictator on the duplicitous game he was playing, by posing as peacemaker one day while providing aid and comfort to FARC terrorists on the next.

"Plan Columbia" may or may not be leading us to victory in the drug war. But it at least suggests that certain kinds of insurgencies may be winnable. It also serves as inspiration for another bumper sticker: "Viva Uribe! FARC Chavez."

Pick one up today at the American Contrarian Gift Shop