Pat Dollard | Young Americans

(IBD)

War On Terror: A foreign country puts its men on the line to rescue American hostages and pulls off one of the greatest rescues in history. Might a little gratitude from Congress be in order?

Not since the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe has a rescue of hostages held by terrorists ended so spectacularly. Wednesday’s liberation by the Colombian army of three Northrop contractors and 12 others will go down as one of history’s great strikes against terror.

In the wake of the rescue, Democrats’ caricature of Colombia as a night-haunted right-wing dictatorship, a la 1976 Guatemala, looks increasingly hollow.

The American contractors were taken hostage during a coca-spraying mission in 2003. Their flimsy aircraft went down in the jungle after their engine failed with no backup. One of their colleagues, Thomas Janis, was shot dead by FARC on the spot as he destroyed classified documents, and Luis Cruz, a Colombian on the same mission, was tortured to death.

In his 2005 book “Imperial Grunts,” Robert D. Kaplan writes that the survivors were then lost to the jungle as crucial time was lost in the initial hours of the accident because of Clinton-era restrictions on U.S. engagement.

So Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell spent five years with brutal terrorists tied up in the jungle with little hope. Last week’s rescue ended that nightmare, and today the longest-held American hostages are free.

For the nation identified as our best ally in Latin America, isn’t this proof enough of its friendship? A country that sticks its neck out for U.S. citizens at such grave risk to its own men deserves our thanks.

The best way to express our appreciation would be to correct another U.S. blunder by ending Congress’ shutout of Colombia’s free trade treaty. It was put on hold in April, after a rules change engineered by Reps. Jim McGovern and Louise Slaughter and executed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

On Monday, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, will try to get them to make amends. “Colombia is our strongest ally in the region, and it is critical that we support Plan Colombia and a free-trade agreement with Colombia,” he said.

In the wake of the rescue, Pelosi’s continued refusal to even permit a vote on the pact now stands out as the pinnacle of ingratitude.

Democrats, pandering to Big Labor, have isolated Colombia from all the other Latin American states that have sought and been granted free-trade status. They include such troublesome countries as Nicaragua, headed by a communist regime that has extended asylum to FARC terrorists.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a known quantity committed to strengthening democratic institutions and bringing peace to cities. He has knocked his country’s infamous murder rate down by 40% and murders against trade unionists by 87%. But none of this seems to cut any ice with Pelosi.

Don’t think this doesn’t hurt Colombia. In a recent interview with IBD, Colombian trade minister Luis Guillermo Plata pointed out that keeping Colombia out of free trade hobbles its competitiveness with its neighbors.

“It’s not only a disadvantage as we compete with free-trade nations like Peru, but also with Chile and Mexico,” Plata said. “These countries compete with Colombia to attract U.S. direct investment. Not having the treaty approved . . . is the equivalent of sanctions. That’s because companies in our countries upgrade factories with investment. They will get it, we won’t.”

Moreover, much of the investment that would come of a treaty would be directed into Colombia’s oil and gas industries, putting more energy on the market. As it is, 56% of the foreign investment without the pact has gone to energy and mining, Plata pointed out.

If Speaker Pelosi can’t see her way to permit a free-trade vote in appreciation of Colombia’s daring rescue of three innocent Americans, what will it take?