DANGER IN COLOMBIA

For a few minutes last week, White House drug policy adviser Barry
McCaffrey dropped the pretense that the $1.3 billion U.S. military effort
in Colombia is aimed at reducing the flow of drugs into the United States.
That has been tried before, most recently in the 1990s when the United
States spent $2.2 billion to launch an "anti-drug cartel" operation that
killed off 300 cartel members but did nothing to hinder the drug trade.

In Bogota, McCaffrey talked frankly about crushing a leftist insurgency
that threatens "vital U.S. interests," and warned Colombia's nervous
neighbors to expect a spillover from heavy fighting. Instead of last
summer's political dialogue about cutting drug production, McCaffrey got to
the heart of the operation. Plan Colombia is meant to weaken the guerrillas
by cutting off their drug money.

It's not a drug fight, it's a U.S. intervention in Colombia's long and
bloody civil war, which congressional opponents of the plan feared from the
start.

At best, the plan will drive growers into surrounding countries, where they
will continue supplying millions of Americans with the cocaine and heroin
they demand.

At worst, the United States will be dragged into a Vietnam-style quagmire.

"We've got thousands of people with automatic weapons down there, and it's
going to be a tough go," McCaffrey said. He repeated assurances that the
300 U.S. troops will not be directly involved, but similar promises were
made 40 years ago when U.S. "observers" arrived in Southeast Asia.

There are dangers for the United States even in a limited involvement with
the Colombians. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this month that U.S.
military and spy forces abetted Colombians in the assassinations of about
300 people involved in the cocaine business -- in direct violation of a
long-standing presidential directive against such maneuvers.

Colombia's Wild West approach to law enforcement has earned the country a
well-deserved reputation as an abuser of civil rights. Is it realistic to
expect that record to improve when Colombia launches its full-fledged
shooting war? Will it help U.S. credibility abroad and at home when tales
of atrocities filter out from the Amazon jungle? Even if U.S. troops aren't
involved in the shooting, the United States can't plead innocent when its
fingerprints are all over the operation.

The United States might have an interest in stemming the growing power of a
leftist insurgency in its own hemisphere, but this is the wrong approach.
If the United States -- the biggest consumer of illegal drugs in the world
- -- directed the tens of billions it spends on its failed war on suppliers
toward reducing demand at home, the leftists' drug profits would dry up on
their own.