INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA

U.S. demand created the drug crisis situation in Colombia, and our military
intervention there merely places U.S. troops and civilian contractors in
harm's way in an effort to salvage our failed drug policy.

The U.S. administration has proposed, and congressional Republicans seem
prepared to accept, a $1.7 billion military aid package to Colombia. This
formidable expenditure builds on existing aid - Colombia is already the
largest recipient of U.S. military aid outside the Middle East - and
involves us more deeply in a decades-old civil war, as well as perpetuates
programs that have failed to control drug production.

As a veteran, I know the importance of a clear military objective, of
having the resources needed for success, and a clear exit strategy.

In Colombia, we are sending a handful of helicopters and a few hundred troops.

Yet we were unable to control a smaller Vietnam with hundreds of
helicopters and half a million troops.

The Colombia military intervention seems poorly planned, unrealistic and
doomed to fail. After a few years of military support, we will face the
choice of accepting defeat or gradually being pulled into an expensive
military quagmire in which victory is unattainable.

The reason the United States is becoming more involved in Colombia's
internal affairs is that the U.S. government's efforts to reduce cocaine
availability have failed miserably, and drug money has strengthened the
rebel armies.

We already spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to eradicate
crops in South America, especially in Colombia. According to a 1999 report
by the General Accounting Office, "Despite two years of extensive
herbicides spraying, U.S. estimates show there has not been any net
reduction in coca cultivation - net coca cultivation actually increased 50
percent."

Rather than escalate a failed policy, we should recognize that the present
strategy cannot succeed and look for new approaches. According to the Rand
Corp., eradication is the least effective way to reduce drug use. Rand's
research found that $34 million spent on drug treatment in the United
States would have the same effect as $783 million in eradication
expenditures. Naturally, the less cocaine the United States consumes, the
less incentive growers in Colombia will have to grow coca. That would be
the best eradication policy.

Further, we need to face the difficult and politically controversial
question of whether prohibition enforced by the drug war provides better
control of the drug market than regulation enforced by administrative law.
If we want to get international cartels and urban gangs out of the drug
market, we must determine how to control the market through civil law
rather than criminal law. The administration's most frequent rationale for
pumping millions of dollars in aid and tons of military equipment into
Colombia is the need to fight "narco-guerrillas." In fact, there are
reports that all sides - including the side the United States supports, the
Colombian military - have been tied to the drug trade.

It seems that we are supporting one group of drug traffickers while
opposing another group.

Finally, one of the most troubling aspects of the aid package working its
way through Congress is its near-total ignorance of the massive human
rights violations being committed by forces allied with the Colombian
government. According to Human Rights Watch, the Colombian army tolerates,
aids and abets human rights violations. Terror is so rampant in Colombia
that most human rights organizations have closed their Colombia offices.

Yet just 4 percent of the aid package would go toward the improvement of
human rights and judicial reform.

The Colombian aid package is nothing more than an introduction to a
quagmire and an escalation of failed drug policy.

The administration and Congress should step back and formulate goals they
want to achieve in Colombia and then determine how best to achieve them
without promoting bloodshed and lawlessness.