Pubdate: Fri, 25 Aug 2000
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/

CAMPBELL'S COURAGEOUS STANCE

Last week, we noted that both major presidential candidates have avoided 
the subject of America's military intervention in Colombia. Since then, 
President Clinton signed a human rights waiver that frees $1.3 billion in 
aid to Colombia, even though President Andres Pastrano has barely met the 
conditions imposed by Congress.

American soldiers and civilians are arriving in Colombia, yet the war is 
not even a blip on the political radar.

All the more reason to applaud the courage of Rep. Tom Campbell, a 
Republican who wants to make it an issue in his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Unlike other politicians, Campbell openly acknowledges that the drug war -- 
at home and abroad -- has been a dismal failure. Over the past two decades, 
the government has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. Yet the 
drug problem has only worsened.

While other political leaders argue that the aid will be used exclusively 
for the eradication of the growth and trafficking of coca leaves, Campbell 
tells a starker truth: "The money is to buy 63 U.S. helicopters . . . to 
help the military of Colombia, whose human rights record has been 
criticized for years, to fight an insurgency it has been battling for over 
30 years."

To those who say the United States will not be aiding a counterinsurgency 
military campaign, Campbell responds, "We are entering a Third World 
jungle. We're creating strategic hamlets, into which those living in the 
countryside will be concentrated. We're sending U.S. military advisers, and 
the legislation puts no cap on the number of those advisers."

To Campbell, who fought against the aid -- unlike Democratic Senators 
Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- the choice is clear: We can spend 
$1.3 billion to enter "one side of a civil war" in Colombia or "we can use 
that money to help countless addicts who seek to get clean."

Of his Washington colleagues, Campbell says, "Their brains work fine," he 
says, "it's their backbones that are missing."

How right he is.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens