ARE WE FOOLS RUSHING INTO COLOMBIA?

The Clinton White House and the Republican leadership in Congress seem
hellbent on opening up the American money spigot full wide to help the
Colombian government fight narcotraffickers--and presumably reduce the
flow of illegal drugs into the U.S.

President Clinton's $1.6 billion aid package was easily endorsed
Thursday by Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, who
larded $117 million more to fight drugs in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Except for tough-on-drugs, election-year posturing, there is no
justification for this sudden and massive escalation of U.S.
involvement in Colombia--or even a clear strategy for how the money
will be used.

This policy threatens to entangle the U.S. in a decades-old foreign
guerrilla war while doing nothing to dampen the engine that ultimately
drives narcotrafficking: America's roughly $50 billion-a-year appetite
for illicit drugs.

Any wider American involvement in Colombia deserves a full
congressional debate, both on the wisdom of the aid package and on
whether that money could be more effectively used in some other way,
like combating drug addiction in the U.S.

The latest warning against deeper U.S. involvement comes from a
powerful report by Human Rights Watch that documents extensive links
between the Colombian army and paramilitary groups accused of atrocities.

Colombia's conflict is not a neat duel between the government and one
opposing group. It is instead a mayhem involving two guerrilla fronts,
numerous drug cartels, and the government's army and drug police, in
addition to several independent paramilitary units that roam the
countryside like death squads for hire.

Of all the actors in this tragedy, the last are the bloodiest.
According to another report, just since the beginning of this year
paramilitary squads have been responsible for most of 39 massacres
that left 271 people dead.

The Human Rights Watch investigation establishes their links with
several army units, which use paramilitaries to do the dirty
anti-insurgency work of terrorizing suspected guerrillas and their
sympathizers.

In the past few years the several army generals suspected of
involvement with paramilitary units have been fired, but otherwise the
government rejected the Human Rights Watch report.

It would be repugnant to funnel American aid to a foreign army with
such bloody credentials. At a bare minimum, any additional U.S. aid
should be conditioned on the Colombian armed forces severing any ties
with the paramilitary units and aggressively moving to defang and
eliminate them.

Far better than that, Congress and the Clinton administration ought to
reconsider the upside-down priorities of this country's war on drugs.
The additional billions poured into foreign interdiction ought to be
used fighting the enemy within--drug addiction--by funding additional
treatment and education programs to reduce demand right here at home.