VIETNAM, EL SALVADOR AND NOW COLOMBIA?

The chief foundation of all states ...are good laws and good arms; and as
there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that
where they are well armed they have good laws. -- Machiavelli, The Prince

We won't make the same mistake thrice - at least that's what one hopes. One
cannot, of course, ever be sure.

In early March we were treated to lengthy reports about what kinds of
helicopters we would be selling to the Colombian government to help it fight
drug traffickers. Although formerly favoring the purchase of the Vietnam-era
helicopters known as the UH-1H Hueys that cost $1.8 million each, the
administration now favors purchasing Blackhawks that cost $12.8 million
each.

Whichever helicopter is purchased the machine will be used to fly
American-trained battalions of the Colombian Army into the coca-growing
regions of southern Colombia that is dominated by leftist guerrillas. The
goal is to help the Colombian military achieve greater mobility since the
reason the peasants keep growing coca is because the armed forces lack
mobility.

On March 30 the House of Representatives passed an emergency spending
measure that included funds for the purchase of 30 Blackhawk and 33 Huey
helicopters. That was not all it did.

It also provided $470 million for the Colombian Army and $115.5 million for
the police that will be used to train and equip three army battalions for
anti-drug operations. That is wonderful since it means that we won't have to
worry about our forces getting involved.

It will be a lot different from our experience in Vietnam.

Vietnam was the country that, with our help, was eventually able to turn its
government over to the North Vietnamese. A lot of people died in
accomplishing that and in hindsight we know that we could have accomplished
the same thing had we not sent one soldier there to die. Colombia won't be
anything like Vietnam if only because it's in a different part of the world.

And we learned from our experience in Vietnam.

The people who support spending billions on helping the army, such as Dennis
Hastert, House Speaker, say we should send our money to Colombia because the
bill is "about our children and whether we want our children to grow up in a
society free from the scourge of drugs." The money would be spent not only
for helicopters but for military advisors to help the Colombian military and
police forces battle drug traffickers.

Mr. Hastert could have been the House Speaker back in 1961. That was the
year in which the December 1961 White Paper was issued.

It argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid to South
Vietnam, and the introduction of large-scale American advisers to help
stabilize the government of Ngo Dinh Diem who was destined to be
assassinated in late 1963, something those urging his support could not, of
course, have foreseen.

The whole idea was to keep the Communists from taking over Vietnam as they
subsequently did, something else that could not have been foreseen.

Since neither of those events was foreseeable it made perfectly good sense
to do what we did. Having done it and having had a bad result, we learned
our lesson, with one minor exception.

El Salvador.

That was back in 1980. Thanks to our help, the Salvadoran military became a
large, well-equipped army that got confused as to its mission and murdered
more than 70,000 civilians.

One of its most famous units was the Atlacatl unit. The Atlacatl unit was
formed in 1981 as the country's first rapid-response unit dedicated to
fighting leftist guerrillas and was intended to show how American money and
training could transform the Salvadoran army into a professional fighting
force. Many of its officers trained at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Shortly after the
unit was formed it was involved in the massacre of 781 peasants at El
Mozote. Col. Jose Domingo Monterrosa, the first commander of the battalion,
was alleged to have been one of the directors of the El Mozote massacre.

He was implicated in 1983 in the slaying of 100 peasants at Copapayo where
survivors said he told villagers not to forget his face because he was going
to kill "all of you Communists" and might have done so had guerillas not
blown up him and his helicopter in 1984. A platoon from that battalion
killed six Jesuit priests in 1989. By the time the war ended in 1992, the
United States had spent more than $4 billion dollars and 75,000 Salvadorans
had been killed.

President Clinton has asked for money to fight the drug war in Colombia.
Congress will give him the money.

The money will go to the paramilitary forces.

They are anticipating its arrival.

On April 7 it was reported that 21 Colombian villagers were killed by
paramilitary gunmen. The shootings occurred in two poor barrios of Tibu.
According to Ruben Sanchez, the local delegate of the federal human rights
ombudsman's office, the paramilitary "came and dragged the people from their
homes and massacred them right in front of their families." There were 9
assailants, eight in camouflage and one in civilian clothes. According to
the report the killings bore the trademarks of rightist paramilitary groups
who routinely massacre those they believe to be collaborating with the
leftist guerrillas. The Colombian armed forces that we are supporting have
long been implicated in human rights violations such as the episode in Tibu.
They'll be glad to get the helicopters and the training.

It will, as those seeking it say, make them more mobile.

It may be that they'll be able to stamp out the drug growing.

It may be that they won't. Time and lots of dead people will tell. We can't
control the first.

We'll probably help create the second.