HIGH ON DRUG-WARRING BUSH'S COLOMBIA PROBLEM

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 Colombia 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. The deal was
executed by an Ecuadorian president who since then was ousted from power,
fleeing to the United States, where he resists efforts to return him to
Ecuador to face charges of abuse of power.

We are supposed to wiggle our way through any morphing of Ecuador policy on
the presence of U.S. airplanes operating out of its territory, from the
hospitality of one government, to fermenting opposition on the grounds that
by our presence we are violating Ecuador's sovereignty. 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
AWAC 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. "The money in Colombia is a
particular waste" he comments, "in that the country is fighting an
honest-to-goodness civil war against guerrillas who want to topple the
government. These guerrillas just happen to be funded by the drug lords, as
are the paramilitary squads on the other side. In any case, even if the
effort is successful in eradicating cultivation and production, it will
just move to another country." 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.