CAMPBELL'S COURAGEOUS STANCE

Last week, we noted that both major presidential candidates have avoided
the subject of America's military intervention in Colombia. Since then,
President Clinton signed a human rights waiver that frees $1.3 billion in
aid to Colombia, even though President Andres Pastrano has barely met the
conditions imposed by Congress.

American soldiers and civilians are arriving in Colombia, yet the war is
not even a blip on the political radar.

All the more reason to applaud the courage of Rep. Tom Campbell, a
Republican who wants to make it an issue in his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Unlike other politicians, Campbell openly acknowledges that the drug war --
at home and abroad -- has been a dismal failure. Over the past two decades,
the government has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. Yet the
drug problem has only worsened.

While other political leaders argue that the aid will be used exclusively
for the eradication of the growth and trafficking of coca leaves, Campbell
tells a starker truth: "The money is to buy 63 U.S. helicopters . . . to
help the military of Colombia, whose human rights record has been
criticized for years, to fight an insurgency it has been battling for over
30 years."

To those who say the United States will not be aiding a counterinsurgency
military campaign, Campbell responds, "We are entering a Third World
jungle. We're creating strategic hamlets, into which those living in the
countryside will be concentrated. We're sending U.S. military advisers, and
the legislation puts no cap on the number of those advisers."

To Campbell, who fought against the aid -- unlike Democratic Senators
Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- the choice is clear: We can spend
$1.3 billion to enter "one side of a civil war" in Colombia or "we can use
that money to help countless addicts who seek to get clean."

Of his Washington colleagues, Campbell says, "Their brains work fine," he
says, "it's their backbones that are missing."

How right he is.