$1.3 BILLION TO COLOMBIA IS ABOUT POLITICS, NOT DRUGS

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

Mr. 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 the country's 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 to 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 that they are doing the best
anyone can.

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 Mr. 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 Mr. Clinton is worse than the Republican congressional
leadership on drugs, missile defense and other issues. It is that in the
end he is no better, though he has the opportunity to be so.

Mr. 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. Mr.
Clinton justified the waiver in terms of progress being made by the
Colombian 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 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. When governments
credibly show that the use of force contributes to stability and reduces
oppression, as in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, support is sustained
for military and peacekeeping operations.

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 are 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.