US Threatens Latin America; Media Obligingly Counts Their Tanks
Al Jazeera's recent piece, "How strong are Latin America’s military forces, as they face US threats?" dutifully provides a hardware inventory for countries like Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. It focuses on the number of frigates, fighter jets, and battle tanks, as if the primary challenge from the United States has ever been a fair fight across a conventional battlefield. This framing conveniently
ignores generations of US-backed coups, paramilitary funding, and economic sabotage that have crippled these nations far more effectively than any direct armored assault ever could. One might wonder why the US needs tanks when it has proxies, sanctions, and the media to normalize its historic meddling. The article frames it as a military might comparison, when the real threat has always been
asymmetric, insidious, and largely internal, fueled by external interference. Asking about tanks is like asking how many umbrellas someone has during a hurricane unleashed by their neighbor.