MISSION CREEP

Colombia's President Andres Pastrana has given President Bush a golden
opportunity to clarify why U.S. troops are in the South American nation.
Last week, Pastrana requested that GIs who have been training Colombian
narcotics troops now help the regular army against leftist guerrillas.

Many critics of America's military involvement in the region have suspected
that the drug war was always just a pretext to put U.S. troops in a
position to take on the rebels. They warned that each new deployment of GIs
put America a step closer to a Vietnam-style quagmire. After all, they
reasoned, America's disastrous involvement in Southeast Asia began with
just a few hundred "advisers."

Pastrana's request should bring the issue to a head. Will America stick
with its stated mission to wipe out the drug trade or entangle itself in
Colombia's 40-year civil war?

The parallels with Vietnam are unsettling, but there is one important
difference: America has in Colombia the definable national interest that
was missing in Vietnam. Colombia lies within America's historical sphere of
influence. It boasts South America's oldest democracy. The country is
America's 10th-biggest supplier of oil, though rebel attacks have recently
reduced exports. Its proximity to the Panama Canal (Colombian guerrillas
have been making regular incursions across the Panamanian border) gives the
entire Western world a stake in Colombian stability.

It might make sense, then, for America to help stamp out the hemisphere's
last major leftist insurgency, especially since it is growing stronger on a
hefty diet of drug profits. Plenty of Americans would disagree, however,
which is why Bush should lay out and defend America's long-range plans.

Are U.S. troops in Colombia to fight a drug war, or is this the start of
something bigger? Pastrana has posed the right question. It's time
Americans got an answer.