U.S. IS ON WRONG TRACK IN COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON - President Clinton bought $1.3 billion worth of political cover last week by giving final authorization to a controversial anti-drug aid package for Colombia. He will visit, ever so briefly, that South American country on Aug. 30 to check on his investment.

Clinton hauls in a bargain, since the money is not his. He buys protection for the Democrats against silly charges of being soft on drugs, and throws in a presidential stopover for a few hours in a place that is every security agent's nightmare.

U.S. taxpayers may get more than they realize or ultimately want for their money. The investment engages the United States in a civil war on the side of military forces it cannot control or easily monitor. And Plan Colombia will not produce a victory over drug trafficking and use, unfortunately.

The aid package fosters the illusion that Washington is coping with an intractable social and criminal problem at home that shows no sign of going away. That is the point of political cover, of course, and its peril.

America's politicians are not dealing honestly with the national drug epidemic that is overwhelming our available medical, social and criminal justice resources. They are not likely to do so until the country has a president who will stage a national intervention.

That is, a president who will honestly, persistently and clearly explain to the nation the severity of the problem and then acknowledge the inadequacy of the current approach. That president will charge every elected official at municipal, state and federal levels with the responsibility for working to lessen the drug burden on American society every day and then hold them to it.

The national intervention would turn the spotlight on these officials, rather than on Colombia's guerrilla-fighting forces or Mexico's president, and the key role Americans must play in the struggle against narcotics. Political involvement in drug abuse education, rehabilitation and enlightened law enforcement remains spotty, and at odds with inflated rhetoric about waging "war" on drugs.

Representative governments routinely purchase political cover when an intractable problem upsets their electorates. They deflect blame onto others or build minimal plausible claims they are doing the best anyone possibly could.

But political cover eventually becomes the governmental equivalent of the drug user's psychological state of denial, blocking honest attempts to come to terms with the problem.

Even in his final months Clinton is unwilling to take on demagogues to his far right. He seeks to placate or neutralize them with Plan Colombia. It is not that on drugs, missile defense and other issues Clinton is worse than the Republican congressional leadership; it is that in the end he is no better, though he has the opportunity to be so.

Clinton's signature on a national security waiver on Wednesday cleared the way for the military-heavy aid program to Colombia to proceed despite concerns in Washington about human rights abuses by Colombia's forces.

Clinton justified the waiver in terms of progress being made by Colombia's army in reducing human rights abuses in the field, immediately touching off criticism from liberal Democrats who do not want to fund potential atrocities.

Both the justification and the criticism miss the larger point: Aid of $1.3 billion will not buy Washington control over Colombia's desperate forces as they operate in war zones. Humanitarian restrictions on U.S. aid have to be designed and implemented to protect Americans, not Colombians or other potential targets of abuse who are beyond American protection.

Americans need to be protected against the folly of unsustainable commitments abroad, which drain national treasure and credibility. The American public has demonstrated in ways big and small, in Vietnam, Somalia and El Salvador, that it will not support the use of force when that force creates as much suffering and abuse as it was intended to resolve.

Human rights restrictions on U.S. aid should serve as a guardrail against commitments that will be abandoned later under public pressure. Properly crafted, such legislation raises legitimate questions about the extent and nature of U.S. involvement and flashes warning lights.

That care and foresight is missing in Plan Colombia, which is about politics, not about drugs or human rights or insurgency. Colombia is certainly no Vietnam. But Washington is still Washington, and that is where the true danger lies in this situation.