US WILL REAP CROP OF REGRETS IN COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON -- WITH THE delicacy of someone seasoned by much
experience near the summit of government, Donald Rumsfeld has
indicated strong skepticism about a policy from which this country
may reap a bumper crop of regrets. Asked about the $1.6 billion -- so
far -- undertaking to help fight the drug war in Colombia, Rumsfeld
said he had not formulated an opinion. However, he embroidered his
agnosticism with thoughts antithetical to the program for which
George W. Bush, during the campaign, indicated support.

In his confirmation hearing, Rumsfeld, the next secretary of defense,
said combating illicit drugs is "overwhelmingly a demand problem,"
and added: "If demand persists, it's going to get what it wants. And
if it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."

Indeed. In authorizing the aid for Colombia, Congress demanded,
delusionally, the elimination of all of Colombia's coca and opium
poppy cultivation by 2005. That would almost certainly mean a
commensurate increase in cultivation in Colombia's neighbors. One
reason Colombia is the source of nearly 90 percent of the world's
cocaine and a growing portion of heroin is that U.S. pressure on coca
and poppy production in countries contiguous to Colombia, especially
Peru and Bolivia, drove production into Colombia, where coca
production has increased 140 percent -- to 300,000 acres -- in five
years.

Now pressure on Colombia is pushing production into Colombia's
neighbors. The New York Times reports that cocaine processing labs
have recently been found in Ecuador's Amazon region. This is evidence
that local peasants, who have crossed the border in recent years to
work in the cocaine business, are "returning with the drug expertise
they have acquired in Colombia."

Regarding the use of the U.S. military in policing this region, it is
depressing to have to say something that should be obvious, but here
goes: The military's task is to deter war and, should deterrence
fail, to swiftly and successfully inflict lethal violence on enemies.
It is difficult enough filling an all-volunteer military with
motivated warriors without blurring the distinction between military
service and police work.

The $1.6 billion for Colombia will mostly pay for helicopters that
Colombia's military will use to attack drug factories and 17,000
Marxist guerrillas, who are the world's most affluent insurgents.
They use drug trafficking, taxes on coca production, extortion and
ransoms -- grossing perhaps as much as $900 million a year -- to wage
a war now in its fourth decade. The guerrillas also are opposed by
right-wing paramilitary forces -- 8, 000 strong and growing -- that
are increasingly involved in drug trafficking.

Kidnapping has become industrialized in Colombia, and assassins can
be hired for "a few pesos," according to Brian Michael Jenkins.
Writing in the National Interest quarterly, Jenkins, an analyst of
political violence and international crime, says Colombia's 30,000
murders unrelated to war translate into 100 deaths per 100,000
Colombians, a rate which in the United States would mean 250,000
murders a year.

Colombia's drug-related agonies are largely traceable to U.S. cities.
Although one-third of Colombia's cocaine goes to Europe, America's
annual $50 billion demand is a powerful suction pulling in several
hundred tons of cheaply made, easily transportable and staggeringly
profitable substances. Here is the arithmetic of futility: About
one-third of cocaine destined for the United States is interdicted,
yet the street price has been halved in the last decade of fighting
the drug war on the supply side.