WAR CLOUDS IN COLOMBIA LOOK FAMILIAR

President Clinton's once keen sense of avoiding dangerous
entanglements abroad has failed him in Colombia. The White House has
pushed forward a supersized military aid package that is now driven by
politics and pork rather than by coherent strategy to help that South
American nation.

Let's stipulate: Colombia's problems are severe. The government of
President Andres Pastrana deserves U.S. sympathy and support in its
overlapping campaigns against Marxist guerrillas, drug smugglers and
the worst elements of its own military.

But the $1.7 billion aid package for Colombia the House of
Representatives will vote on this week has been designed with all the
care of a McDonald's counterperson stuffing a pound of french fries
into a quarter-pound bag. The United States pursues unattainable goals
largely for domestic political reasons with inappropriate tools in
Colombia.

Worse: Many of the administration officials involved know this. These are
precisely the arguments some of them put forward for months to check the
grandiose vision of an American-run war on drugs in South America pushed by
Clinton's "drug czar," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and key House Republicans who
want to pound Clinton and Vice President Al Gore on being soft on narcotics.

But those arguments and essential "morning after" questions have been
abandoned since Clinton and his aides abruptly reversed course to
accept GOP proposals to send 30 advanced Blackhawk helicopters and
other counterinsurgency equipment to the Colombia military as an
emergency priority.

Questions not being asked (much less answered) now in the rush to
quagmire include the following:

What happens when it becomes clear that the considered judgment of
U.S. Air Force officers that the Colombian military will not be able
to maintain the Blackhawks under the conditions in which they will be
flying is shown to be correct? Will the United States replace the
helicopters that crash or are shot down, at $13 million a copy? Will
large numbers of U.S. advisers be provided? If cocaine exports from
South America continue unabated, will 30 more, or 300 more, Blackhawks
be furnished to expand the war?

Clinton of course will not be around to provide answers. Colombia's
first Blackhawks will not arrive until six months after he leaves
office. His successor will inherit an open-ended military obligation
that can be trimmed back or abandoned only at domestic political cost.

Clinton's instincts initially steered him away from the Colombia trap.
He seemed to share the wariness of a big military investment there
that has prevailed at the Pentagon throughout the discussion of U.S.
options. The enthusiasm for greater involvement came, predictably
enough, from the State Department.

Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering signaled this in a remarkable
speech last October that warned anyone listening -- which would have
included Pastrana, who had launched peace talks with the guerrillas --
that "Peace at any price is fool's gold. ... The peace process must
support and not interfere with counternarcotics cooperation."

Statistics showing cocaine exports from Colombia doubling on the
Clinton watch seem to have focused White House attention on Gore's
vulnerability shortly after that. And serious lobbying by defense
companies helped melt the White House's original, justified caution.

House Republicans have championed supersized aid to Colombia, with an
eye to blasting Clinton and Gore if it is not passed. They are the
true catalysts for this foreign policy fiasco, in which the
Clintonites merely show the courage of their cynicism, jumping aboard
a train they hope will be derailed in the Senate.

The House Republicans blithely ignore that American demand is at the
root of the drug problem more than Colombian supply. They voted down
efforts to add funds for drug treatment at home in the catchall bill
that provides aid to Colombia. They sliced out of that same bill $211
million in debt relief for the world's poorest countries. They will
shoot away the problems of the Third World.

That has been tried elsewhere, with similar fuzzy and contradictory
thinking in Washington at the takeoff. I can only wonder: Where is the
Vietnam Syndrome when we need it?

Hoagland is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist,
specializing in foreign affairs. ( hoaglandj@washpost.com)