THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST ON COCAINE

Those of you old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall the
early years, when the majority of Americans couldn't find the place on
a map and practically nobody could tell the difference between the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. Well, it's time to look up
Colombia on the map of South America and learn what FARC is.

When the history of this one is written, what will amaze everyone once
again is how hopelessly clueless we all are - the Clinton
administration, congress, the media. The media keep reporting "a $9
billion spending bill to help Colombia combat drug traffickers" as
though it was just that simple. (Actually, only $1.6 billion of the
spending bill is for the "counter drug aid package for Colombia."
There is $2.6 billion to pay for our military costs in Kosovo, $2
billion for disaster relief and then, somehow, amazingly, the thing
came out of the House Appropriations Committee with the total price
tag doubled by pure pork barrel.) We are all under the happy illusion
that the money we're sending to Colombia will be used to combat drug
traffickers. Actually, there's every likelihood that some of it will
go to drug traffickers.

The civil war in Colombia has been going on for forty years. About 40
percent of the country is now under the control of FARC -- the Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. FARC started out protecting poor
campesinos. The drug boom of the Nineties caused landless peasants
from all over the country to flock to the southern portion of the
country to grow cocaine -- and FARC protects them. FARC claims that
it is not directly involved in the drug traffic, but it taxes growers
and transporters, and is obviously dependent on them.

Meanwhile, we have the government of Colombia, which does not control
the army; the army is pretty much out of control. And to the right of
the army are the paramilitary defense forces, a nasty bunch of thugs
given to murder, massacre, kidnapping, and drug dealing. According to
the latest Human Rights Watch report on Colombia, there is evidence
linking half of the eighteen brigades of the Colombian army to the
paramilitary thugs. "For years, detailed evidence has accumulated
implicating senior army commanders, mid-level officers and troops of
connivance with, or even the planning the execution of, paramilitary
massacres," writes Alma Guillermoprieto, a longtime correspondent in
the region.

Intelligence sharing is the most common form of army-paramilitary
cooperation, but Human Rights Watch reports a particularly interesting
form of collusion. The Colmbian army traditionally demands a high
number of enemy casualties from officers who want promotion. So the
paramilitaries bring dead civilians to army barracks in exchange for
weapons. The officers dress the corpses in camouflage and claim they
were guerrillas killed in battle. Is this a concept or what? And you
thought we had problems with those ridiculous body counts in 'Nam.

Fortunately, our government can be counted upon to screw up even a
terrible idea, and the Colombian aid package is now stuck in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is naturally upset that the package
comes to his side with double the original sticker price on it. He
wants to strip out the pork, and he proposes to do so by letting the
aid package go through the normal appropriations process, which will
slow it down by a good six months.

This prospect makes the U.S. Army unhappy because it needs the package
to pay for Kosovo costs. Meanwhile, the liberals are dubious about
the whole enterprise, while the conservatives, who are gung-ho for
getting us involved, are mad about the pork. Which leads us to the
famous liberal-cheapskates coalition. Ain't politics grand?

Just to prove that someone in Congress has some sense, Rep. Nancy
Pelosi of California tried to add $1.3 billion for drug treatment and
prevention in the United States but lost on a party-line vote. Most
of them think it would be more fun to send Blackhawk helicopters,
speedboats, and planes, and the U.S. trainers and advisers and all
that good stuff we all remember so well. I always like these policies
where we're funding both sides in a war.