THE COLOMBIA COMMITMENT

As he visits beleaguered Colombia today, President Clinton faces a new
crescendo of opposition, both Colombian and American, to his plan for $1.3
billion in largely military aid to Colombia. And much of what the critics
say is true. Though the declared U.S. enemies in Colombia--drug production
and the Marxist guerrillas who profit from it--represent real problems,
they are hardly the only factors destabilizing Colombian democracy.
Government corruption, much of it drug-related, is rampant.

The unemployment rate is an intolerable 20 percent.

Torture and murder by government forces or allied paramilitary groups go
unpunished. Colombia suffers from a comprehensive social and political
breakdown, which only the resolve of its own people, not foreign aid, can
ultimately correct.

And yet we cannot agree with those--including prominent human rights groups
that have protested the president's decision to waive human rights
conditions on the aid for this year--who oppose the president's Plan
Colombia, with its heavy emphasis on drug crop eradication and a new
military offensive against the guerrillas. Currently, the 15,000-man rebel
army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is better funded
and equipped than the government's own forces.

As a result, a large portion of Colombia's territory has fallen under the
control of a group that traffics heavily in cocaine and heroin, kidnaps and
murders innocent people (including three American citizens) and, if it ever
took power, would set up a dictatorship based on Marxist ideology.

In a recent poll, nearly half of Colombians said they consider the FARC
commander, Manuel Marulanda, to be the most powerful man in their country;
other polls show that he has almost no public support.

Small wonder that thousands of middle-class Colombians, democracy's core
constituency, are abandoning their country.

And small wonder that Mr. Marulanda has refused to bargain seriously with
the government, even though President Andres Pastrana ceded large
territories to the guerrillas to jump-start a peace process.

Talk of "another Vietnam" in Colombia is irresponsible hyperbole.

Mr. Clinton's plan, which has won the support of the Republican Congress,
envisions no introduction of U.S. combat forces, and it includes a
substantial amount of money to shore up the legal system and address other
social and economic ills. (The United States could do even more to help the
Colombian economy by removing certain trade barriers, as Mr. Pastrana is
asking.) The military aid is also conditioned on the Colombian forces'
human rights performance, and presumably the next president will not waive
those conditions if American-trained troops commit atrocities.

But there is an irreducible military element to Colombia's plight; the
country needs to restore governmental control over all its territory, and
it needs the capability to put enough heat on the FARC--and its sources of
drug money--so that the guerrillas have no choice but to bargain in good
faith. Only the United States is in a position to help Colombia do this.
Such a course carries costs and risks--including the risk of bloody
failure--but so would a decision to leave Colombia to its own devices.

The president and Congress are right to have made this commitment. Mr.
Clinton's trip, albeit brief, is an important demonstration that, however
daunting Colombia's problems may be, the United States will not just walk
away from them.