MCCAFFEREY'S COLOMBIAN DRUG WAR

Yet another sordid chapter in the United States' involvement in Latin
America unfolds...

Barry McCaffrey, the nation's current drug czar and former commanding
general of the Southern Command, the branch of the army in charge of all
military affairs in Latin America, stood before an Austin audience on
Monday night and proclaimed a near-victory in the war on drugs. McCaffey
came to Austin touting the official Clintonian party line: What was once a
"war" is now only "a series of community epidemics." McCaffrey claimed that
to win the drug war once and for all, young people need viable role models
and parental support.

McCaffey's cliched speech did not even mention the U.S.'s increasing
military presence and possible invasion of Colombia.

Such hypocrisy could only be equaled by Jerry Falwell's admitting to
smoking crack.

Ironically, The same four-star general on stage Monday preaching the "just
say no" doctrine of personal responsibility has demanded $1 billion in
"emergency aid" from Congress to fight Colombian drug traffickers.

McCaffrey's request already has the support of Clinton and congressional
Republicans and will make Colombia the largest receiver of U.S. aid after
Israel and Egypt. And unlike these two nations, Colombia is in the midst of
a 35-year-old civil war which has recently escalated. That this $1 billion
will go directly into financing the Colombian military in a war against
coca growing peasants who sympathize with communist rebels is a fact
McCaffrey failed to mention.

This is only the latest chapter in the sordid story of American imperialism
in Colombia which has taken two very bizarre twists this summer.

First, a U.S. spy plane -- the same kind used to gather intelligence on the
whereabouts of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade -- went missing in the
jungles of Colombia after a reconnaissance mission with five U.S. soldiers
and two Colombians on board.

The plane, a C-17, left from a clandestine base in Ecuador and was to take
pictures of guerrilla operations in the south of Colombia. The plane later
turned up near the Ecuadorian and Colombian border with all seven on board
dead due to a mechanical failure in the plane's radar.

In this first episode, most Colombians, guerrillas, farmers and
intellectuals alike, were outraged. To understand their plight just imagine
what would happen if the Cubans established a base in northern Mexico to
spy on Texas.

Next, on Aug. 7, the wife of a high ranking American officer was arrested
for shipping 15.8 pounds of pure cocaine from the American embassy in
Bogota to New York. Her husband's only superior in Colombia was the drug
czar himself.

While this episode has proved embarrassing for all the self-righteous
American military "advisers" in Colombia, it also dramatizes a real
dilemma: 80 percent of cocaine produced in Colombia is consumed right here
in the good old U.S.A. But since the problem of drug consumption in America
is only a question of "personal responsibility" and having adequate role
models, let us return to the problem of U.S. intervention in Colombia.

The U.S. has never needed much of a pretext to invade Latin America and set
up puppet governments friendly to U.S. business interests. It has never,
however, invaded a Latin American country as large and as complex as
Colombia -- which is exactly why it is trying to muster up a "Pan-American"
force of Colombia's neighboring countries, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru to go
in and do its dirty work. The U.S. has already established bases in all
these countries to monitor drug trafficking and the activities of the
communist guerrillas who have achieved recent victories.

To invade Colombia would mean not only destroying high profile drug lords
like Pablo Escobar, but would also wipe out the small coca farmers who form
the base of popular support for the communists. And while the idea of a
communist revolution in Latin America sounds like a Cold War anachronism,
the type of gringo imperialism that McCaffrey endorses behind closed doors
(or at least not in Austin) may just turn Colombia into another El Salvador.