Trump isn’t bluffing — Gustavo Petro still doesn’t get it

"Don't threaten me; I'll wait for you here if you want," said the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to Donald Trump. Very unwise words, especially after the amazing operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Perhaps the Colombian president doesn't understand the seriousness of the matter or doesn't care?.

What President Donald Trump has done, among other things, is to send a clear message to all enemies of the United States. This Administration is not playing games and is capable of doing what seemed impossible to many; including an operation with the same level of complexity, or even greater, than the operation to capture Osama bin Laden.

Colombia is no small matter in the production and distribution of drugs to the United States, and Gustavo Petro, in particular, is a leader with attention-seeking and possibly drug use issues, which lead him to have very dangerous and aggressive behavior towards the United States.

While Venezuela is the dispatch office for several drug cartels, Colombia is the leading producer of cocaine. Colombia today produces between 65% and 70% of the world's cocaine, and under Petro's administration, has reached the sad record of 300,000 hectares planted and a production of 2,600 tons of pure cocaine hydrochloride. So if the United States really wants to get to the bottom of the drug trafficking problem in the region, Colombia is critical.

"Although I have not been a military man, I know about war and clandestinity. I swore not to touch another weapon since the 1989 peace pact, but for the homeland  I will take up arms again that I don't want," Petro said. It is hard to understand the defiant tone of the Colombian president while the whole world is verifying that Trump is not lying when he makes warnings.

The situation in Colombia is complex. While Petro has indeed spent years formally not belonging to the guerrillas, it is clear to anyone who examines in detail his actions as a politician, whether in the Bogotá mayor's office or in Congress, that he governed directly for the benefit of the narco-guerrillas. To put it in a more direct way: Petro has been for years the political arm of the guerrillas. Guerrillas that allegedly, according to different investigations would have financed his presidential campaign.

But the president of Colombia, besides being a friend of the Colombian narco-guerrillas, is a textbook socialist. One of those who speak, reciting fragments of socialist books as if they were poetry; one of those who all his life dreams of being in the history books as a leftist leader; one of those who effectively took up arms because they believe in violence as a form of "struggle." Perhaps, Petro, in his socialist delusions, is willing to run the risk of confronting Trump if that gives him his moment of fame as a leftist leader.

"Any commander of the public force who prefers the U.S. flag to the Colombian flag is immediately removed from the institution by order of the bases and the troops and myself," said the Colombian president. Gustavo Petro definitely does not understand that his delirium of socialist caudillo is nothing more than a fantasy and that no sensible person would behave that way. Much less an army like Colombia's, with such a solid history and foundation.

Petro seems to believe that he lives in Venezuela; he does not understand that he does not have a bought army and that in Colombia, the Constitution is still respected. One of the dangers that Colombia is facing at this moment is that, in view of the recent events, Gustavo Petro will quickly descend into the abyss of madness that he has been going through in the last months and that he will become radicalized using the excuse of the Trump Administration's actions.

Fortunately, Colombia is not Venezuela yet, and the army will not back his follies, but it is certainly a dangerous situation to see the Colombian president in such an episode of delirium while such determining events are taking place in the region.