FIGHT THE DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA

Imagine a place where violence erupts on a magnitude like few others.
Killings, bombings, kidnappings, extortion and many other violent crimes go
unpunished because the government lacks the ability to effectively attack
the enemy. An enemy which uses the offer of peace as a means to regroup and
plan new atrocities.

Imagine four senators abducted, a presidential candidate taken at gunpoint,
and local leaders executed for resisting. Imagine billions of dollars in
illegitimate currency moving in illegal channels supporting arms
trafficking on many continents and tied with many avowed terrorist
organizations.

Is it Lebanon? Afghanistan? No, it is Colombia. When will "military aid" to
Colombia seem like common sense? The illicit drug cartels poison millions
of our citizens (and throughout the world) with their form of bio-warfare
and create huge infrastructural costs in terms of government agencies,
hospitals and health care, not to mention ruined families and lives.

If the campaign in Afghanistan has shown anything, it has shown that the
synergetic effect of American forces, when applied surgically and
strategically, can destabilize and disrupt terrorist forces.

If the drug war was taken from the streets of New York, Bogota and
Fayetteville to the dens of the malicious feudal drug lords then a
disruption would result.

We lost the initiative long ago in the war on drugs. Yes, we must treat and
help those who battle daily with drug addiction, but we must also make it
untenable for this unopposed assault upon America to continue.

Jason B. Nicholson, Fayetteville