Pubdate: Sat, 06 May 2000
Source: Farmington Daily Times (NM)
Copyright: NorthWest New Mexico Publishing Co.
Contact:  Letter to the Editor, P.O. Box 450, Farmington, NM 87499
Fax: (505) 564-4630
Website: http://www.daily-times.com/
Author: Georgie Anne Geyer-Guest Columnist

HALF-MEASURES MAY TRAP US IN QUAGMIRE

WASHINGTON - Last year, when the Colombian government awarded a piece
of land the size of Switzerland to the country's Marxist guerrilla
movement to use as a safe haven, hard-nosed Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori telephoned his Colombian counterpart with a delighted
response: Now you have them all in one place and can wipe them out
easily!

But Colombian President Andres Pastrana, an aristocratic-looking
former journalist, was horrified by the words of the wiry,
relentlessly determined Japanese-Peruvian president.

Fujimori had utterly wiped out his brutal guerrilla movement, the
"Sendero Luminoso," and he didn't do it with kid gloves. Pastrana,
though, had dreams of other, nicer ways: He would win the guerrillas
over and make peace for his country! (Indeed, the guerrillas' Camelot
safe haven in the area of San Vicente was supposed to make them more
amenable to peace.)

Appeasement vs. annihilation

These, then, are the two visions of war and peace that are being
discussed in Washington and in Colombia every day now.

But as the Clinton administration pushes its $1.7-billion aid package
to Colombia to support President Pastrana's social, economic,
counter-drug, human rights and military programs, critics are emerging
and making that single most heinous of accusations: The United States
is getting itself into "another Vietnam," and in a country that few
Americans even know.

At the same time, most indications are that the guerrillas of the
FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the warlords
they protect, the brutish drug traffickers, are gaining ground - and
all while American and Colombian moderates constantly debate how best
to control and, more, to change them.

Not quite another Vietnam

I think that the Vietnam analogy is indeed apt, but the danger is not
the one that the critics are charging.

We never put into Vietnam enough of a Fujimori-like absolute will to
win the war. And in Colombia today, as in so many other areas, we are
willing to put into place only a limited amount of power with finite
goals - against the guerrillas' infinite goals.

We will do enough to make us look engaged, to mollify our own
consciences and to roil the enemies, but not enough to actually win
the struggle.

Remember, the officially voiced intent is not to defeat the
guerrillas, but to somehow single out the drug traffickers from among
them - and defeat only them. (Recently, the Colombians even took
hard-worn fighters who had not been out of the jungle for 20 years on
European trips to show them what they were missing in the modern world!)

The Blackhawk helicopters and other counterinsurgency equipment that
the United States is supposed to provide to the Colombian military
will not even get there until at least six months after President
Clinton leaves office, a typical example of the "small print" in
anything this administration does that involves force.

So, my question is not whether this aid package, if indeed it passes
Congress, is too much, but whether it is too little.

Are we indeed again getting into a Vietnam-type quagmire, not because
of our military obstreperousness, but because of our bureaucratic timidity?

Can we really imagine winning this war without defeating the
guerrillas as, despite the terrible bloodbaths, we did with the
Central America insurgencies?

Do half-measures ever lead to the ultimate solutions - or, do we even
know what those solutions are, besides making the guerrillas and the
druggies act nice?

Other lackluster performances

Several other foreign policy crises, all occurring as well this past
week, further illuminate the half-measure policies of this
administration:

In Kosovo, the United States announced this week that it was
deliberately bringing back into Kosovo dozens of Serbs, to resettle
them there among the Kosovar Albanians whom the Serbs tried so
assiduously to wipe out only last year (another new delusion conceived
by our mad "multiculturalist" policy-makers).

With Taiwan, President Clinton this week announced a new package of
military aid to Taiwan, but he ostentatiously led off by announcing
that we had decided NOT to sell four Aegis destroyers to the
potentially threatened island-state. (It was instructive that the
negative part was announced first and most prominently, of course, to
mollify that same China that threatens Taiwan.)

In a third example, President Clinton announced this week that he
would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 4 and 5 in
Moscow.

This announcement came immediately after Putin had tea with Queen
Elizabeth II in London, courtesy of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had
already greeted the Russian president like Churchill greeting FDR
after World War II.

But wily KGB elite operative Putin had already seized the initiative,
putting the Clinton White House once again in the position of reacting
and responding to what others do, instead of initiating and carrying
out a strong-minded American policy.

Just before flying to London, Putin pushed the long-delayed Start II
treaty through the Duma. Clinton should be grateful, is the Russian
position.

Actually, this "surprise" act was a ruse laced with ways to keep
Clinton from withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, thus
making it impossible for the United States to install the much-needed
missile defense of American territory.

All of these cases offer proof of the weakness and, yes, policy
foolishness of this administration. Do things halfway - or don't do
them at all.

Try things that can never conceivably work and then say piously, "We
tried." Pretend there are no enemies out there, not even people with
different interests, and just go out and make friends with them,
whatever the cost.

And there are still eight months to go!
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