SIGNS OF SANITY SHOWING ON COLOMBIA

The Colombia-drug-war package that sailed through the House earlier
this year is mercifully hitting some speed bumps in the Senate. On
Tuesday, during the Appropriations Committee debate on the $1.6
billion package, Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) offered an amendment
eliminating all but $100 million of the proposed aid and, instead of
being laughed out of the committee room, the motion received 11 votes.

The surprisingly close 15-11 vote makes it clear that there is growing
queasiness on both sides of the aisle about helping fund Plan
Colombia. Yet its proponents continue to spew their empty rhetoric.
"Without a strong Colombia," said Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), "an
abundant and steady flow of illicit drugs will head for the United
States." An abundant and steady flow of illicit drugs is what we have
right now, senator, and will continue to have as long as there is a
demand for it.

On the same day as the Appropriations Committee mark-up, members of
the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control were hearing
evidence of the dramatic increase in heroin use among teens--the
average age of first-time heroin users has plummeted from around 27 in
the late '80s to just over 17 in 1997.

While unable to derail the Colombia package, opponents on the
Appropriations Committee were able to force a number of improvements
on a spending proposal that never should have been offered in the
first place. Among them: lowering the total cost to about $1.1
billion; placing strong human-rights conditions on the aid; reducing
the military component by downgrading the helicopters from
top-of-the-line Blackhawks to less expensive Hueys; requiring
congressional approval for any additional funding for Colombia.

These changes show that minds still can be moved by evidence--so
overwhelmingly against aiding Plan Colombia that only deep denial
could have gotten us this far. In fact, the Colombia package is the
clearest proof yet that the drug war is the new Vietnam: Behind the
scenes political leaders will tell you that it has failed, but in
public they continue to call for its escalation. It's almost as if
drug czar Barry McCaffrey is channeling Robert McNamara.

How else to explain the mission creep that is turning our Colombian
drug-fighting efforts into a counterinsurgency campaign--and
inexorably drawing us into a four-decades-old civil war? And just in
case this sounds like flower-child, lefty, give-peace-a-chance talk,
the most virulent critics of this drug-war initiative are the Veterans
for More Effective Drug Strategies--more than 100 retired military
officers who have written a letter to McCaffrey setting out the
military arguments against our involvement in Colombia.

Indeed, one of the group's founders, Lt. Cmdr. Sylvester Salcedo,
returned to the president the medal he earned fighting the drug war in
protest of our Colombian "drug-control" policy. "The military,"
Salcedo says, "doesn't have any clear goals, there is no definition of
victory, there is no exit strategy, and we haven't considered whether
a long-term occupying force will be required to prevent coca
cultivation."

As Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy points out: "No
eradication or interdiction program in the past 35 years has had any
serious impact on the supply of illegal drugs in the U.S. Rather than
cutting off the supply, these campaigns have consistently spurred new
source countries, new trafficking routes and new drugs."

When we shut down marijuana imports in the '80s, the traffickers
simply shifted to cocaine. And when we put the clamps on Peruvian coke
in the early '90s, the cartels moved their base of operation to Colombia.

And if any further proof of the wrongheadedness of the U.S. approach
in Colombia is required, one need only know that Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright really, really wants the drug-war aid package to
pass. "He needs the money now," said Albright of Colombian President
Andres Pastrana. The last time Albright really, really wanted
something we got Kosovo--and with each passing month the evidence
mounts on just how disastrous that "victory" was.

At the same time the Appropriations Committee approved aid to
Colombia, it voted to cut off funds for the continued deployment of
troops in Kosovo by next summer. The Colombia initiative is a six-year
undertaking. The Senate should stop it now, before we all regret it
later.