PRESIDENT BUSH'S COCAINE HAZE

Comic Paul Rodriguez once observed, "Sometimes I think war is God's way of
teaching us geography." Indeed, how many of us would know where East Timor
is had not Indonesian militias attempted to crush that country's
independence movement? How many of us could locate Burundi and Rwanda on
the map (they're west of Kenya and Tanzania) were it not for their civil
wars? Or Sierra Leone (just north of Liberia on Africa's west coast)? Or
Kosovo?

Unfortunately, these days we're also learning more than we want to know
about Colombia, which stretches from Panama in Central America to the
Amazon Jungle, from Venezuela on the Caribbean to the Andean nations of
Peru and Ecuador on the Pacific.

The House of Representatives this week is again debating whether to keep
funding a $1.3 billion war against leftist guerrillas in Colombia under the
guise of fighting cocaine trafficking. The problem is that while the
guerrillas do, in fact, protect small-time coca growers, the Colombian
military is passing along to rightwing militias much of the military aid we
are supposedly providing to the Colombian government.

Somewhat surprisingly, the militias themselves have acknowledged being as
involved in cocaine trafficking as the guerrillas they're fighting. It's
just that the militias protect cocaine agribusiness while the guerrillas
protect Indian farmers.

This civil war has been going on for four decades, but when the Clinton
Administration last year decided to get the US militarily involved, it
predictably forced Colombia's guerrillas to move much of their cocaine
production into neighboring countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Peru,
Venezuela, and Panama. And bad as this development has been from those
countries' point of view, the problem has been compounded by: 1) refugees
fleeing across Colombia's borders to escape increased fighting, and 2) by
Colombian guerrillas moving some of their bases to remote areas of
neighboring countries.

As to what little counternarcotics activity has actually been carried out
in Colombia, most of it has consisted of helicopters spraying herbicides on
Indians' coca fields. However, as a Chronicle editorial noted Monday,
"Aerial fumigation from helicopters has also left many peasants with health
problems and contaminated their land so that it cannot sustain edible
crops. Six governors from southern provinces, in fact, recently signed a
letter to President Andres Pastrana, demanding that aerial fumigation be
stopped."

What makes all this especially frustrating is that we've done all this
before ­ and not so long ago. The United States has begun to repeat the
folly of its wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Because Congress has
limited the number of GIs that can be sent to Colombia, President Bush is
trying to revive the old CIA-in-Laos ploy: use mercenaries in lieu of GIs
to do the dirty work. Congress last year placed a 300-person limit on such
civilian operatives, but His Fraudulency would like to eliminate any such
restrictions.

The current debate in Congress would allocate $676 million to replenish
that part of the $1.3 billion that has already been spent fighting leftists.

"Right now," notes The Chronicle, "71 percent of funds to the Andean region
will go for military assistance. The United States should use these funds
to provide assistance for governmental reforms, anti-poverty programs, and
social and economic assistance for refugees. This is a war that cannot be
won by military means. It has no concrete goal, no popular support, and no
exit strategy."

To that I might add, Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative ­ two
programs the Bush Administration is counting on to shore up America's
failed war on drugs ­ have not slowed trafficking of cocaine into the
United States but are instead turning once-friendly governments into
nervous neighbors.

In short, the US appears to be embarking on a strategy that is cruel toward
the indigenous population and a disaster to wildlife (both local and
migratory). It perpetuates the myth that we can shoot our way out of drug
addiction. And it will likely leave the US politically isolated in yet one
more region of the world. Sort of makes you wonder if GW himself ever
escaped the drugged-out haze of his younger years.