Re: U.S. aid to Colombia.

Here comes another Vietnam! We will train the military of a government
unpopular with its people. Presumably that military will win such
battles as occur in a fluid guerrilla war, and the more victories we
win the worse the situation will get. The drug crop cultivators will
find new fields moving into neighboring nations, which will then need
help. We will be viewed on the ground as imperialist bullies, who are
foolish and ultimately impotent.

If this extension of the "drug war" occurs, hopefully it will prove to
be the disastrous finale that finally wakes up the American people to
the immorality, the expense, and the futility of what is really a war
with ourselves.

As a society, we throw our political, technical and organizational
skills against drug importation, distribution and consumption. We
build prisons and wreak Draconian sentences on citizens, mostly young
and black.

At the same time, we as a society pay whatever is the going price to
acquire and use the drugs we are campaigning so hard against. If our
society's hunger for first-class medical care for all was as strong as
our society's hunger for drugs, we'd find plenty of money for
universal medical care.

We pay for the drugs, and we pay for the war against
them.

When will we wake up and discover, "We have met the enemy, and he is
us"? When we do, then perhaps we can define and try to cope with the
real problems.

Robert G. Zeitler, M.D.,
Dunedin

Bookmark: additional articles on Colombia are available at
http://www.mapinc.org/latin.htm