HIGH ON DRUG-WARRING

The new president has a great deal on his mind, added to which is the
burden, imposed by past legislation and executive order, to conclude the
civil war in Colombia. That isn't the stated reason for our intervention in
that part of the world. We're all over the place in order to stop the
production and export of drugs, notably cocaine. There is no reason to
doubt the sincerity of President Pastrana's desire to bear down on the drug
trade, but what the government of Colombia is actually worried about is a
civil war. Bogota wants to cut off the cash supply enjoyed by the rebels
who, at the moment, dominate an area in the south of Colombia approximately
the size of Switzerland.

So now we hear about our newest FOL. That is a Forward Operating Location.
We were using Panama up until 18 months ago, but when Panama finally
asserted its sovereignty, it got twitchy about the continuation of U.S.
search planes operating out of its territory. So? We moved the operation to
Ecuador, and built an air base in Manta. From there our super US E-3 AWACS
surveillance planes fly over Colombia and spot drug activity. Our pilots
don't just drop bombs on the drug lords' enterprises. We radio the
information to Colombian police and military detachments, and their role is
to swoop down and abort the export of cocaine to-primarily-U.S. consumers.
How long has this been going on?

About as long as memory holds out, in the matter of drug wars. What is most
refreshing in recent news on the matter is Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's observation that we have got a demand problem on our hands, not
a supply problem. The government of Ecuador is a little shaky, the
incumbent president having inherited the deal permitting the U.S. FOL in
Colombia. Ecuador has an unstated investment in the progress of the drug
war. It desires success for the Colombian fight against its rebels, but not
just that measure of success that would cause the warlords to move their
operation south, into Ecuador.

So: Mr. Bush inherits a truly anfractuous diplomatic problem in South
America in which different priorities are being shuffled in search of
common interests, however fragile. If the drug lords began to subsidize not
the rebels, but the government of Colombia, could we be certain that
Colombia would then be so hospitable to AWACS planes and helicopters and
military trainers?

O. Ricardo Pimentel, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, draws attention
to the movie Traffic, as dramatizing the futility of our drug policies. In
that movie is depicted the ultimate invincibility of cash-crop growers who
can generate gold from tilling the soil. He seizes on the final sequence in
the movie where the futile U.S. drug czar, played by Michael Douglas, asks
officials how much money they will need to continue to fight the war.
"More," answer the officials. "In this kind of war," Mr. Pimentel comments,
"the answer will always be 'more,' and it will never be enough."

So, has SecDef Rumsfeld come up with a successful way to wage war against
the demand for drugs? No. There are proposals, from such as Governor Pataki
and ex-drug czar McCaffrey, that suggest changing the emphasis on how to
treat drug addicts: treatment, instead of incarceration. "We jail about
450,000 people every year in the United States for nonviolent drug
offenses." Speaking of civil wars, Mr. Pimentel gives us some perspective:
The Confederate Congress called, at the outset of our Civil War, for the
recruitment of 400,000 men.