EDITORIAL: DRUG DOMINO

Use caution in Colombia

Maybe Rep. Mark Souder didn't play with dominoes when he was a kid,
because he doesn't seem to recognize a domino theory when he utters
one.

In a recent interview, Souder told The Journal Gazette's Sylvia Smith
that President Clinton's proposal to send $1.6 billion to Colombia to
fight our drug war isn't comparable to early U.S. involvement in
Vietnam. Colombia, after all, is stable, Souder opined.

That in itself is an interesting assessment of a country embroiled in
a long civil war.

But Souder went on to wonder what would happen if things get worse in
Colombia while the United States fails to "put any military in to help
them fight our problem."

"Are we just going to let Colombia fall? Venezuela fall? Bolivia fall?
Peru fall? Ecuador fall? Our hemisphere fall? I don't think so. We
aren't going to lose our hemisphere to narco-terrorists."

Click-click-click-click-click-crash. Sure sounds like dominoes to
us.

Credit Souder for laying his tiles on the table. By considering
intervention in Colombia, he challenges Congress to decide just how
far it wants to go in turning domestic drug abuse into a military priority.

Last week, the Washington Post reported U.S. military surveillance
flights over Colombia have declined two-thirds in the past year. And
Clinton's package would do little to restore them. The administration
gives higher priority to missions elsewhere.

This low priority for cocaine-hunting in Colombia is a political
warning to Souder. There is little public support for stepped-up U.S.
military involvement in the drug war. If somehow the U.S. armed forces
did get caught up in Colombia's violence, the public's patience would
surely be shorter than it was for the Vietnam War.

Souder needs to lay political groundwork for the drug war itself
before raising scares about narco-terrorists taking over the Americas.
And it will be a hard sell. Americans recognize the moral quagmire
they'd be entering if their soldiers laid waste to Andean villages
because our rich nation won't moderate its demand for stimulants.