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?