More Terrible Than Death: Massacre, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia: Drugs, Violence, and America's War in Colombia [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The historical context that Kirk provides is extremely informative and her analysis of the Gaitan assassination and subsequent U.S. response sets the stage for the rest of the book.
Also powerful are Kirks descriptions of the guerilla and paramilitary leaders, especially Castano. While their actions are unspeakably monstrous, their arguments in support of their actions are terrifyingly cogent. While you will not condone their actions, you may find yourself nodding in agreement only to realize that he is talking about murdering innocent people.

There were some drawbacks to the book. While Ms. Kirk states at the end of the book that this was not meant to be comprehensive, her omission of significant facts does limit the effectiveness of her message. For example, from another book, I learned that Colombian drug lords feared extradition to the United States more than just about anything else. I do not recall anywhere in this book where this fact is clearly stated. Simply stating this would have been invaluable since one huge reason that Escobar and others intensified violence was as a response to the Colombian governments reinstatement of extradition.

The book could have used some better transitions and tighter editing but the nightmarish stories of the common person is more than enough to overlook those minor points.

Thankfully, Ms. Kirk does not engage in this type of moral equivalency game. She focuses on the situation in Colombia and the horrific violence that has wracked that country for over fifty years. By doing so, she adds to the shamefully small amount of English-language literature about drug trafficking and its interlinkage with marxist guerrillas and right-wing death squads in Colombia. Given the fact that Colombia each year produces and exports hundreds of metric tons of cocaine and heroin to the United States and the fact that those drugs have caused thousands of murders here and elsewhere over the last twenty years, you'd think that Colombia would also be a charter member of the axis of evil. I don't mean the government in Bogota, but the people who are directly and indirectly involved in the drug trade there. Yet for some reason it is not.

Anyway, I think the book gives a very good run-down about the major players in the Colombian tragedy: the FARC, the ELN, the AUC, the army etc. Kirk writes well and at times even beautifully (however, one or two attempts at poetic description fall flat). I do think that she is a little too sympathetic to the leader of the FARC. In my opinion, he may have been a good guy once, but that was many a massacre and drug deal ago.

Finally, I think that Kirk states something very true about Colombia and the United States in the beginning of her book. Yes, Colombia's wars would probably still rage at some level without drug money flowing into the coffers of the combatants. Yet the billions of dollars some of the United States' population insist on spending on illegal drugs has supercharged the civil strife in Colombia. To paraphrase Kirk, our pleasures pull Colombia under.