Pubdate: Sat, 26 Aug 2000
Source: International Herald-Tribune (France)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2000
Contact:  181, Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly Cedex, France
Fax: (33) 1 41 43 93 38
Website: http://www.iht.com/
Author: Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post

$1.3 BILLION TO COLOMBIA IS ABOUT POLITICS, NOT DRUGS

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton bought $1.3 billion worth of political 
cover the other day by giving final authorization to a controversial 
anti-drug aid package for Colombia. He will visit, ever so briefly, that 
South American country on Wednesday to check on his investment.

Mr. Clinton hauls in a bargain, since the money is not his. He buys 
protection for the Democrats against silly charges of being soft on drugs 
and throws in a presidential stopover for a few hours in a place that is 
every security agent's nightmare.

U.S. taxpayers may get more than they realize or ultimately want for their 
money. The investment engages the United States in a civil war on the side 
of military forces it cannot control or easily monitor. And Plan Colombia 
will not produce a victory over drug trafficking and use, unfortunately.

The aid package fosters the illusion that Washington is coping with an 
intractable social and criminal problem at home that shows no sign of going 
away. That is the point of political cover, of course, and its peril.

America's politicians are not dealing honestly with the national drug 
epidemic that is overwhelming the country's available medical, social and 
criminal justice resources. They are not likely to do so until the country 
has a president who will stage a national intervention.

That is, a president who will honestly, persistently and clearly explain to 
the nation the severity of the problem and then acknowledge the inadequacy 
of the current approach. That president will charge every elected official 
at municipal, state and federal levels with the responsibility for working 
to lessen the drug burden on American society every day and then to hold 
them to it.

The national intervention would turn the spotlight on these officials, 
rather than on Colombia's guerrilla-fighting forces or Mexico's president, 
and the key role Americans must play in the struggle against narcotics. 
Political involvement in drug abuse education, rehabilitation and 
enlightened law enforcement remains spotty and at odds with inflated 
rhetoric about waging ''war'' on drugs.

Representative governments routinely purchase political cover when an 
intractable problem upsets their electorates. They deflect blame onto 
others or build minimal plausible claims that they are doing the best 
anyone can.

But political cover eventually becomes the governmental equivalent of the 
drug user's psychological state of denial, blocking honest attempts to come 
to terms with the problem.

Even in his final months Mr. Clinton is unwilling to take on demagogues to 
his far right. He seeks to placate or neutralize them with Plan Colombia. 
It is not that Mr. Clinton is worse than the Republican congressional 
leadership on drugs, missile defense and other issues. It is that in the 
end he is no better, though he has the opportunity to be so.

Mr. Clinton's signature on a national security waiver on Wednesday cleared 
the way for the military-heavy aid program to Colombia to proceed despite 
concerns in Washington about human rights abuses by Colombia's forces. Mr. 
Clinton justified the waiver in terms of progress being made by the 
Colombian Army in reducing human rights abuses in the field, immediately 
touching off criticism from liberal Democrats who do not want to fund 
potential atrocities.

Both the justification and the criticism miss the larger point: Aid of $1.3 
billion will not buy Washington control over Colombia's desperate forces as 
they operate in war zones. Humanitarian restrictions on U.S. aid have to be 
designed and implemented to protect Americans, not Colombians or other 
potential targets of abuse who are beyond American protection.

Americans need to be protected against the folly of unsustainable 
commitments abroad, which drain national treasure and credibility. The 
American public has demonstrated in Vietnam, Somalia and El Salvador that 
it will not support the use of force when that force creates as much 
suffering and abuse as it was intended to resolve. When governments 
credibly show that the use of force contributes to stability and reduces 
oppression, as in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, support is sustained 
for military and peacekeeping operations.

Human rights restrictions on U.S. aid should serve as a guardrail against 
commitments that will be abandoned later under public pressure. Properly 
crafted, such legislation raises legitimate questions about the extent and 
nature of U.S. involvement and flashes warning lights.

That care and foresight are missing in Plan Colombia, which is about 
politics, not about drugs or human rights or insurgency. Colombia is 
certainly no Vietnam. But Washington is still Washington, and that is where 
the true danger lies in this situation.
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