COLOMBIAN AID WON'T STOP DRUGS

Because Americans are such poor students of history, the Clinton
administration's plan to spend $1.7-billion propping up Colombia's
weak armed forces sailed through the House with little public outcry.

Have we forgotten the lessons of our involvement in Central America in
the 1980s, when, in an attempt to contain Communism, our government
provided support to right-wing governments and paramilitary groups
that used the aid to slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians?

This time, America's stated public interest is stopping drug
trafficking. But bolstering Colombia's military will have little
impact on the flow of narcotics into the United States. It could,
however, draw us into a brutal civil war in which civilians are a target.

The Clinton administration argues that Colombia is the source of 90
percent of the cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin seized in the
United States and that the only way to stop it is to intervene in
Colombia's civil unrest. Many of Colombia's coca farmers cultivate
their crops under the protection of leftist guerrillas who use the
drug trade to finance their continued insurgency. To stem the drug
flow, the administration argues, Colombia's military has to be given
the tools and training to defeat the leftist guerrillas. That's why
the aid package includes 30 Blackhawk and 33 Huey helicopters, as well
as $470-million for the country's army and $115.5-million for the police.

But the situation in Colombia is not so clear-cut. The country's
military has been linked to right-wing paramilitary groups that have
been accused of egregious human rights violations as well as narcotics
trafficking. According to the watchdog group Human Rights Watch, a
substantial portion of the Colombian military's brigade-level units
have collaborated with murderous paramilitary groups and death squads.

There's an eerily familiar ring to the reports that, in the past few
years, dozens of labor activists have been killed or have
disappeared.

Even if the humanitarian arguments don't sway those in Washington --
and history shows they rarely do -- maybe the practical ones will. For
a country that has touted capitalism around the globe, our leaders
don't seem to understand the laws of supply and demand. Trying to
reduce the supply of illicit narcotics without eradicating demand will
be ineffective. Even if the Colombian military is successful in
closing down large coca farms, the economic incentives in drug
trafficking are just too great for there to be any serious
interruption in the flow of cocaine and heroin to the United States.
Narcotics traffickers will simply shift locations, as they did in
moving to Colombia after a crackdown occurred in Peru and Bolivia. As
the Council on Foreign Relations said about Washington's international
drug war: "For 20 years, these programs have done little more than
rearrange the map of drug prohibition and trafficking."

The Colombian aid package now faces review in the Senate. If it
doesn't get waylaid there, the United States will spend more than a
billion dollars to be drawn into a morally ambiguous foreign civil war
to advance a drug war strategy that is a proven loser.