MISSION MISGUIDED IN COLOMBIA

State Department functionaries may blandly describe the U.S. decision to
lift most restrictions on military aid to Colombia as a "mission change."
It ought to be described instead as Uncle Sam wading deeper into the
Colombian muck, from ankle-to knee-deep.

On Friday, President Bush signed an otherwise unremarkable $28.9 billion
anti-terrorism supplementary appropriation. Almost as an aside, it cancels
the stipulation that Colombia use U.S. aid only for anti-narcotics work,
not for general anti-insurgency operations in the country's 38-year-old
civil war.

Previous aid packages, Plan Colombia under President Bill Clinton and the
Bush administration's sequel, the Andean Initiative, have funneled $1.7
billion in military aid to Colombia. The prospect of sending hundreds of
millions of dollars more is under discussion. In retrospect, restrictions
that the aid be used only for anti-narcotics work were dubious because in
Colombia's chaotic civil war, combatants and their mission are not so
neatly distinguishable.

So give the Bush administration credit for doing away with this
pretense--and blame for getting the U.S. further involved in a civil war in
which we don't belong.

Under Clinton, the rationale for our involvement was to fight
narcotrafficking. But after two years, its clear that effort has been a
fiasco. Coca cultivation has increased within Colombia and spread back to
Peru and Ecuador, where it had previously declined. The quantity, purity
and price of cocaine and heroin on America's streets remain unaffected.

So the Bush administration has tried to link Colombia's two guerrilla
groups and the paramilitary army with a worldwide terrorist network that
includes Al Qaeda, Hamas, Basque separatists, in some cases with an assist
from the Cuban government.

The evidence ranges from flimsy to fanciful. All the combatants in
Colombia, including elements of the official army, are criminals. But to
argue they are a menace to U.S. security--like Al Qaeda--or to Colombia's
neighbors--like Palestinian terrorist groups threaten Israel--is a stretch.

On Aug. 7, Alvaro Uribe took over as Colombia's new president and
guerrillas marked the occasion with a mortar attack in Bogota that killed
19 people. He already has made some gutsy moves, such as imposing an
additional war tax, and has vowed to expand the armed forces.

But the bottom line is that Colombia's conflagration is a civil war, with
narcotrafficking working as an accelerant. None of the participants can
expect victory. Negotiation remains the only solution. Far-fetched as it
may seem--particularly after the recent failure of peace talks in
Colombia--political compromise is what ended the long civil wars in
neighboring Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

A more constructive role would be for the U.S. to encourage negotiations
while working to cut off the oxygen that keeps Colombia's civil fires
going--the insatiable consumption of narcotics by Americans, right here at
home.