U.S.-COLOMBIA FOREIGN POLICY BREEDS HATRED

Like so many academics before him in the tortured history of U.S. foreign
policy, Michael Shifter misses the mark completely ("Colombia Policy Should
Not Be Terror's Next Victim," Opinion, Nov. 11). Current U.S. policy toward
Colombia is a disaster waiting to happen. What we are doing there is
setting the stage for the next generation of anti-U.S. hatred, this time in
a neighboring region of the world.

The picture that accompanied the article was worth 1,000 essays by
wishy-washy, ivory-tower analysts afraid to rock the boat. It showed an
airplane poisoning fertile farmland in a futile effort to stop the growing
of a crop (coca) that has been produced in the region for thousands of
years. We will never stop the production or consumption of cocaine. What we
will do is destroy the livelihood of thousands of peasants, wreak mass
environmental destruction on the sensitive Amazon environment and give a
new group of poor and desperate people reason to vilify and seek revenge
against the U.S.

Gerald Kamin, Los Angeles