U.S. IN COLOMBIA LOOKS EERILY LIKE U.S. IN VIETNAM

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton's daylong trip to Colombia was
preceded by his fateful decision to waive congressional human rights
constraints placed on U.S. weapons aid to that country's already darkly
controversial armed forces.

In doing this, he shed the moral component of the $1.3 billion aid
measure and confirmed that Colombia's military was a world class human
rights violator, which together with associated rightist death squads
accounts for 80 percent of all human rights violations in that country.
This alone would have disqualified the armed forces from receiving any
U.S. aid.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, is
dangerously intensifying the militarization of the anti-drug war based
on those same tainted armed forces. Ominously, the military, with
implicit U.S. assent, is close to merging the anti-guerrilla and anti-
drug wars, as Washington implicitly pressures Bogota to de-emphasize
economic reforms.

While the administration talks about a demand-side drug strategy (such
as domestic treatment), it is in fact stressing supply-side
interdiction. With the Colombian military acknowledging that it cannot
defeat the guerrillas and President Andres Pastrana confessing that he
cannot guarantee the security of the guerrillas from the death squads
even if they agree to demobilize, U.S. military aid essentially becomes
an irrelevant response to Colombia's major societal dilemmas.

These facts must concern Americans worried that Washington is virtually
guaranteeing the start of the Vietnamization of Colombia.

At Cartagena to discuss with Mr. Pastrana the implementation of the new
U.S. anti-drug aid, Mr. Clinton stressed that U.S. assistance was
targeted at curbing the unlimited trafficking of narcotics to the
United States. Complicating matters, the flow of illicit narcotics also
provides the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, with much of its $1 billion annual income, some of
which has purchased missiles capable of downing U.S.-supplied Black
Hawk helicopters.

This link between the guerrillas and cocaine cartels springs from a
lucrative ''war tax'' paid to the rebels by the drug traffickers for
protection from army raids. This mutually self-serving relationship has
complicated past Washington efforts to carry out its anti-drug
initiatives.

Mr. Clinton's waiving of human rights standards flashes a depressing
green light to Colombia's military, whose latest field achievement was
slaughtering six children only days before the U.S. presidential jet
landed.

Colombia's main leftist group, the FARC, recently has stepped up
attacks against police outposts in rural areas as part of its new
strategy aimed at countering U.S. aid and training. The FARC currently
controls upwards of 40 percent of the countryside and has more than
17,000 armed combatants.

On July 15, FARC forces seized the southwestern town of Roncevalles,
later assassinating 10 captured police officers in a chilling display
of brutality. Two weeks later they struck again in Arboleda, killing 13
policemen. So far this year FARC attacks have led to the slaughter of
120 policemen.

This number should be added to the tens of thousands of civilians, the
bulk of whom were murdered over the past decade by the military and its
allies, as well as by leftist cadres.

A new campaign of violence launched by the rebels at the country's
security forces has sparked considerable controversy over the
appropriate combat use of the Black Hawk helicopters now heading for
Colombia. Even though Congress was explicit in its insistence that the
U.S. would not be pulled into foreign civil wars (the helicopters were
initially provided to help shield Colombia's fumigation aircraft from
ground attack), some U.S. officials are now suggesting extending their
use to shield military units involved in anti-narcotics activities from
guerrilla attack.

The confusion surrounding the goals of Plan Colombia, Mr. Pastrana's
ambitious reconstruction plan to gain the allegiance of a now
disaffected public, has prompted apprehension among some analysts over
the emergence of an ill-defined strategy eerily reminiscent of the
early stages of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Clinton's discussion with his Colombian counterpart undoubtedly
stressed his prime interest in neutralizing Colombia's powerful drug
cartels. But some observers fear, with sound instincts, that the U.S.
leader failed to comprehend Mr. Pastrana's emphasis on the overwhelming
economic nature of his country's debilitating conditions or warnings
from Latin American critics that an escalating U.S. military role in
Colombia could also seriously threaten the region's fragile quasi-
democratic governments.

Mr. Birns is director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, where Mr. Ryan is a research associate. They contributed this
to the International Herald Tribune.