DANGER AHEAD IN COLOMBIA

Let's Hope The United States Isn't Sliding Into A Vietnam-like Commitment Of Troops In The South American Country.

The 36-year-old civil war in Colombia between leftist guerrilla groups and rightist paramilitary squads is a long, complex, bitterly violent dispute over political and economic power. That both sides have hit on cocaine and heroin production as a way to finance their activities is a fairly recent development, an accident of geography and the relative proximity of the huge U.S. market for illegal drugs.

Nevertheless, deepening U.S. involvement in the Colombian war is being sold to the American people as principally an anti-drug initiative. Tellingly, the Clinton administration's chief spokesman for Colombia policy is anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey - and not, say, the secretary of state or defense, or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The drug angle also was instrumental in getting Congress to pass a $1.3 billion package last month to help President Andres Pastrana's government try to regain control over vast areas of Colombia now in insurgent hands. That aid includes 60 helicopters, up to 500 U.S. troops and 300 civilian contractors to train the Colombian military - and a waiver of the troop cap for 90 days if there is "imminent involvement" of U.S. forces in hostilities.

Last week, some 83 U.S. Special Forces personnel began training Colombian soldiers at a jungle base only two hours from the leftist guerilla's main stronghold.

Ever since the fall of Saigon 25 years ago, doomsayers have predicted "another Vietnam" for virtually every military intervention involving U.S. troops, be it Kuwait or Kosovo, Somalia or Haiti. In fact, those adventures, however else their success might be judged, bore little resemblance to Vietnam.

Yet on Colombia - where forbidding jungle terrain, well-established insurgencies and U.S. military "advisers" do bear frightening resemblances to Vietnam - such doomsaying is notable mainly for its absence.

Veiled in anti-drug rhetoric, the administration's Colombia policy has received too much reflexive support and too little serious scrutiny. Until now, talk of a war on drugs has been mostly metaphorical. It hasn't involved pitched battles between U.S. troops and other organized armies.

But if America isn't careful in Colombia, the "war" on drugs could take on a new, all-too-literal meaning.