COLOMBIAN QUAGMIRE

President Clinton's once keen sense of avoiding dangerous entanglements
abroad has failed him in Colombia. The White House has pushed forward a
supersized military aid package that is now driven by politics and pork
rather than by coherent strategy to help that South American nation.

Let's stipulate: Colombia's problems are severe. The government of
President Andres Pastrana deserves U.S. sympathy and support in its
overlapping campaigns against Marxist guerrillas, drug smugglers and the
worst elements of its own military _ three forces that also overlap and at
times cooperate.

But the $1.7 billion aid package for Colombia that the House of
Representatives will vote on this coming week has been designed with all
the care shown by a McDonald's counterperson stuffing a pound of french
fries into a quarter-pound container. In Colombia, the United States
pursues unattainable goals largely for domestic political reasons with
inappropriate tools.

Worse: Many of the administration officials involved know this. These are
precisely the arguments some of them put forward for months to check the
grandiose vision of an American-run war on drugs in South America pushed by
Clinton's ``drug czar,'' Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and by key House Republicans
who want to pound Clinton-Gore on being soft on narcotics.

But those arguments and essential ``morning after'' questions have been
abandoned since Clinton and his aides abruptly reversed course to accept
GOP proposals to send 30 advanced Blackhawk helicopters and other
counterinsurgency equipment to the Colombian military as an emergency priority.

Questions not being asked (much less answered) now in the rush to quagmire
include the following:

What happens when it becomes clear that the considered judgment of U.S. Air
Force officers that the Colombian military will not be able to maintain the
Blackhawks under the conditions in which they will be flying is shown to be
correct? Will the United States replace the helicopters that crash or are
shot down, at $13 million a copy? Will large numbers of U.S. advisers be
provided to maintain the helicopter force? If cocaine exports from South
America continue unabated, will 30 more, or 300 more, Blackhawks be
furnished to expand the war? Clinton of course will not be around to
provide answers. Colombia's first

Blackhawks will not arrive until six months after he leaves office. His
successor will inherit an open-ended military obligation that can be
trimmed back or abandoned only at domestic political cost. Whether Clinton
would have pulled out rather than risk deeper involvement will be an
interesting debating point. But it will be of no help to his successor in a
quagmire.

Sound familiar? Do the names Kennedy and Johnson come to mind? Familiar in
another way as well: This is one more example of this president's political
gluttony. He cannot pass up another plateful of voters as he works to beat
the Bushes once again, this time by proxy. Clinton's instincts initially
steered him away from the Colombia trap. He seemed to share the wariness of
a big military investment there that has prevailed at the Pentagon
throughout the discussion of U.S. options. The enthusiasm for greater
involvement came, predictably enough, from the State Department.

Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering signaled this in a remarkable
speech last October that warned anyone listening _ which would have
included Pastrana, who had launched peace talks with the guerrillas _ that
``Peace at any price is fool's gold. . . . The peace process must support
and not interfere with counternarcotics cooperation.'' This shot across the
bow presaged a far more hawkish approach by Pastrana. Statistics showing
cocaine exports from Colombia doubling on the Clinton watch seem to have
focused White House attention on Gore's vulnerability. And serious lobbying
by United Technologies and other defense companies helped melt the White
House's original, justified caution.

Rep. Benjamin Gilman and other House Republicans have championed supersized
aid to Colombia, with an eye to blasting Clinton and Gore if it is not
passed. They are the true catalysts for this foreign policy fiasco. The
Clintonites merely show the courage of their cynicism, jumping aboard a
train they hope will be derailed in the Senate.

The House Republicans blithely ignore the fact that American demand is at
the root of the drug problem more than Colombian supply. They voted down
efforts by Rep. Nancy Pelosi to add funds for drug treatment at home in the
catchall bill that provides aid to Colombia. They sliced out of that same
bill $211 million in debt relief for the world's poorest countries. They
will shoot away the problems of the Third World. That has been tried
elsewhere, with similar fuzzy and contradictory thinking in Washington at
the takeoff. I can only wonder: Where is the Vietnam Syndrome when we need it?