DRUG WAR HELPS, NOT HURTS, TERRORISTS

Robert Novak wants to link America's war on terrorism to her war on
drugs, and get the Drug Enforcement Administration in the fight
[''America's 2 wars must be linked,'' column, Dec. 10]. He's got a
point: What agency knows, hires and works with more sneaks,
informants and lowlifes than the DEA?

It is Novak's thesis that drug sales fund international terrorists,
so let's make war on drugs and terrorism in tandem. Slay the Islamic
poppy, poison the Arabian reefer, burn Somali quat, and bomb Middle
East drug reserves to kingdom come, down to the last Osama bin Laden
cave. And step up the rhetoric.

Not once in three months, Novak complains, has President Bush used
the phrase ''narco-terrorism.'' Not since President Clinton said he
didn't inhale has the bully pulpit looked so drug war anemic.
(Incidentally, the U.S. Senate confirmed a new drug czar by voice
vote last week. An announcement concerning John Walters' ascendancy
to the last Cabinet spot is expected soon. Pulling in the opposite
direction is FBI Director Robert Mueller, who is attempting to
extricate FBI agents from the drug war fray. J. Edgar Hoover, too,
knew the temptations and quagmire of drug enforcement, and kept his
agents otherwise busy.)

At least, Novak recognizes there is some relationship between drugs
and terrorism, although he ought further mull what it is. Is it
poppies in a drug field per se that make opium precious to
international terrorists? Or is it the poppies' stand against a
backdrop of prohibition and drug war prices and profits that attract
and link terrorists to the drug trade?

Drug sales are a terrorist tool handed them by American drug policy
makers. American leaders (and pundits) make the policies; terrorists
reap the rewards. The rewards include a caveful of ''drugscript'' and
''poppycock'' currency used to buy terror. For America not to
appreciate the consequences of her drug prohibition policy is to doze
off in the poppy fields of Kandahar as Dorothy did in the poppy
fields of Kansas, Land of Oz.

America's drug war serves terrorist henchmen around the world, just
as it does American street gangs.

So, let the Middle East opium wars begin: Send in the drug troops,
deploy helicopter surplus left over from Plan Colombia, fund
opium-free Afghan land banks and air-drop anti-drug leaflets (all of
which will work just as effectively as the last 30 years of drug
war). Or strike an economic blow to the terrorists' Achilles' heel:
Give them a taste of drug tolerance, devaluation and destitution.

James E. Gierach, Oak Lawn