MILITARY AID TO COLOMBIA IS A WASTE OF U.S. TAX DOLLARS

Stepping onto a slippery slope and heading for a quagmire, Congress has all
but approved more than $1 billion in military aid for Colombia in its war
against drug traffickers.

Such supply-side adventures do little to slow the demand-fueled flow of
illicit drugs into the United States. But worse than being ineffectual, the
huge increase in military aid will suck the United States deeper into
Colombia's messy civil war, where all sides have been compromised by
horrible human rights abuses and connections to drug dealers. Washington
should reconsider this folly.

The Senate recently set aside $1.3 billion for assistance to Colombia, the
bulk of it approved last week to pay for high-tech military helicopters and
to equip and train elite Colombian counternarcotics battalions. The House
previously approved $1.7 billion for Colombia and President Bill Clinton
strongly backs the aid, so all that remains uncertain is how Congress will
reconcile the two chambers' bills.

The package will make Colombia the third biggest recipient of U.S. military
aid, behind Israel and Egypt. And it will embroil the United States in a
nasty war that has claimed 35,000 lives during the last decade.

Leftist rebels control huge areas of mountainous countryside in Colombia,
and allow drug traffickers to operate in exchange for money to finance
their insurgency. On the other side, a government riddled with corruption
and in control of only 60 percent of the country is allied with right-wing
paramilitary groups who are in bed with traffickers in Colombia's city's
and towns. Both the rebels and the paramilitaries have been linked to the
wholesale kidnaping, torture and massacre of civilians.

That's the mess the United States is sliding into, hoping to choke off this
country's supply of drugs. If history is any guide, it won't work.