YET ANOTHER WAR

When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced last week that the war on
drugs in Colombia must now be seen as a war on terrorism, he was promoting
a dangerously expansive vision of America's mission abroad.

The 40-year insurgency has been a disaster for the people of Colombia.
Leftist groups control large sections of the country, and the Colombian
government has been unable to bring the conflict to an end.

Part of the problem is that the Colombian military has a poor record with
regard to human rights, and the military's links to right-wing paramilitary
groups have made the Colombian government complicit in wide-ranging atrocities.

The war on drugs has brought the United States into the middle of the
conflict. The United States has provided significant aid to the Colombian
military in order to bolster its war against drugs. At the same time, Sen.
Patrick Leahy has been among those who have insisted that American aid be
conditioned on improved behavior by the Colombian military.

The United States has a sorry history in Latin America of supporting
murderous military campaigns, including the depredations of right-wing
death squads, in order to oppose the advance of communism. In El Salvador
and Nicaragua, past U.S. administrations have winked at or made excuses for
hideous human rights violations.

The enemy is Colombia is not communism, though the left-wing insurgency
that has persisted in the mountainous regions there might resemble the kind
of leftist movements the United States at one time felt compelled to
oppose. Until now, the enemy has been the drug cartels. In recent years,
however, the war on drugs has grown more complex as the leftists themselves
draw profits from the drug trade.

Certainly, both sides in Colombia employ the methods of terrorism.
Civilians are targeted. Bombs are planted. Assassinations and kidnappings
occur. But President Bush launched America's war on terrorism as a way to
combat terrorist organizations of "global reach." That phrase was a
significant qualifier, a way to forestall American involvement in every
nasty fight around the globe.

Ashcroft's extension of the war on terrorism to Colombia appears to be a
political tactic designed to overcome reservations by Leahy and others
about proposals to increase aid to Colombia. But Leahy is not convinced
that the Colombian military and its paramilitary allies have abandoned
their own terrorist activities, and he is reluctant to write a blank check
until he is convinced that human rights will be respected in Colombia.

By making the Colombian fight a new battlefield on the war on terrorism,
Ashcroft seeks to make his bid for increased money hard to resist. The
danger is that America will abet the kind of right-wing terrorism that only
makes matters worse.

Assisting Colombia in the war on drugs is important, particularly since it
is American hunger for drugs that creates the drug problem in the first place.

Involving the United States in an open-ended military adventure in the
mountains of Colombia is another matter altogether and is not automatically
justified by bringing the campaign under the banner of the war on terrorism.

Leahy's skepticism about Ashcroft's effort to expand involvement in
Colombia is well justified, and his attention to the question of human
rights more relevant than ever.