UNITED STATES SHOULD HELP COLOMBIA FIGHT TERRORISTS

During the past 40 years, terrorists of the Marxist group FARC (Colombian
Revolutionary Armed Forces) have killed tens of thousands of Colombians.

They have blown up buildings with car bombs, cut off water and electricity
to major cities, massacred peasants in cold blood. They make hundreds of
millions of dollars a year from ransoms paid by the families of those they
kidnap and from "taxing" drug traffickers.

It's been bad. In the past few days it got worse.

Three years ago Colombian President Andres Pastrana turned over to FARC a
Switzerland-size region of his country. It was meant as a goodwill gesture
to kick off negotiations. But critics said Pastrana was naive to believe
the requisite good will was present on the other side.

They were right. Negotiations were a farce from the start. FARC chief
Manuel Marulanda (known as "Tirofijo," or "Sureshot") failed to show up at
the first session, leaving an embarrassed Pastrana waiting alone at a table
and looking like a stood-up lover. When talks actually started, FARC
accepted nothing and proposed little, stalling for time as it built up
strength in its safe haven.

The travesty came to an end last week when FARC terrorists hijacked a plane
and kidnapped the president of the Colombian Senate's peace commission.
Hours later Pastrana officially ended negotiations. Warplanes bombed FARC
camps, and government troops moved into terrorist strongholds.

FARC's counterattack included the kidnapping of presidential candidate
Ingrid Betancourt, now being held as a hostage.

It is the start of what will likely be a long and bloody -- as well as
inevitable and necessary -- escalation of Colombia's war against
terrorists. It has the support of voters, who are giving Alvaro Uribe
Velez, the presidential candidate with the toughest line against FARC, a
huge lead in the polls before the May 26 election.

To win this war, Colombian troops can sure use the advice of U.S. Special
Forces instructors, who proved in Afghanistan that they are superb at
teaching local troops how to fight irregular forces.

But there is no American help, not for this. Colombia has the sad
distinction of being the only ally that the United States will not help
fight terrorism.

Colombia has received $1 billion in U.S. military assistance in the past
two years, but can only use the aid against drug traffickers, not FARC. The
restrictions were placed by congressional Democrats concerned about the
human-rights record of the Colombian army, and about its ties to right-wing
squads that have committed as many atrocities as FARC.

It is time to lift those restrictions. For one thing, FARC's embrace of the
narcotics trade has made it impossible to distinguish between "drug
dealers" and "guerrillas."

It is ludicrous to expect Colombian troops to first ascertain whether they
are going up against narco-terrorists or just plain old terrorists before
they are allowed to fire their M-16s.

Then there is the problem of far-right atrocities supported by some
elements of the Colombian military. Here, too, American Special Forces can
play a constructive role. Part of the training they conduct with foreign
troops has to do with military tactics, but part of it has to do with
building up a professional military that respects human rights.

Far from helping Colombian right-wing terrorists, what a beefier U.S.
military presence will do is help Colombians eradicate right-wing terrorism.

Nobody in Washington or Bogota wants U.S. troops to do the actual fighting.
But sending more advisers and allowing U.S. arms to be used directly
against FARC is a different story, and something the Bush administration is
now considering.

The restrictions Colombia faces were absurd when they were put in place and
are even more absurd now -- not only are we in the post-9/11 world, we are
in a post-9/11 world in which a Latin American democracy is fighting for
survival.