Pubdate: Fri, 26 Jan 2001
Source: National Review (US)
Copyright: 2001 National Review
Contact:  215 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/
Forum: http://www.nationalreview.com/forum/forum.shtml
Author: William F. Buckley Jr., NR Editor-at-Large

HIGH ON DRUG-WARRING BUSH'S COLOMBIA PROBLEM

The new president has a great deal on his mind, added to which is the 
burden, imposed by past legislation and executive order, to conclude the 
civil war in Colombia. That isn't the stated reason for our intervention in 
that part of the world.

We're all over the place in order to stop the production and export of 
drugs, notably cocaine.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of President Pastrana's desire to 
bear down on the drug trade, but what the government of Colombia is 
actually worried about is a civil war. Bogota wants to cut off the cash 
supply enjoyed by the rebels who, at the moment, dominate an area in the 
south of Colombia approximately the size of Switzerland.

So now we hear about our newest FOL. That is a Forward Operating Location. 
We were using Panama up until 18 months ago, but when Panama finally 
asserted its sovereignty, it got twitchy about the continuation of U.S. 
search planes operating out of its territory.

So? We moved the operation to Ecuador, and built an air base in Manta. From 
there our super US E-3 AWACS surveillance planes fly over Colombia and spot 
drug activity.

Our pilots don't just drop bombs on the drug lords' enterprises. We radio 
the information to Colombia police and military detachments, and their role 
is to swoop down and abort the export of cocaine to -- primarily, U.S. 
consumers. How long has this been going on?

About as long as memory holds out, in the matter of drug wars. What is most 
refreshing in recent news on the matter is Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld's observation that we have got a demand problem on our hands, not 
a supply problem.

The government of Ecuador is a little shaky, the incumbent president having 
inherited the deal permitting the U.S. FOL in Colombia. The deal was 
executed by an Ecuadorian president who since then was ousted from power, 
fleeing to the United States, where he resists efforts to return him to 
Ecuador to face charges of abuse of power.

We are supposed to wiggle our way through any morphing of Ecuador policy on 
the presence of U.S. airplanes operating out of its territory, from the 
hospitality of one government, to fermenting opposition on the grounds that 
by our presence we are violating Ecuador's sovereignty. Ecuador has an 
unstated investment in the progress of the drug war. It desires success for 
the Colombian fight against its rebels, but not just that measure of 
success that would cause the warlords to move their operation south, into 
Ecuador.

So: Mr. Bush inherits a truly anfractuous diplomatic problem in South 
America in which different priorities are being shuffled in search of 
common interests, however fragile.

If the drug lords began to subsidize not the rebels, but the government of 
Colombia, could we be certain that Colombia would then be so hospitable to 
AWAC planes and helicopters and military trainers?

O. Ricardo Pimentel, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, draws attention 
to the movie Traffic, as dramatizing the futility of our drug policies.

In that movie is depicted the ultimate invincibility of cash-crop growers 
who can generate gold from tilling the soil. "The money in Colombia is a 
particular waste" he comments, "in that the country is fighting an 
honest-to-goodness civil war against guerrillas who want to topple the 
government. These guerrillas just happen to be funded by the drug lords, as 
are the paramilitary squads on the other side. In any case, even if the 
effort is successful in eradicating cultivation and production, it will 
just move to another country." He seizes on the final sequence in the movie 
where the futile U.S. drug czar, played by Michael Douglas, asks officials 
how much money they will need to continue to fight the war. "More," answer 
the officials. "In this kind of war," Mr. Pimentel comments, "the answer 
will always be 'more,' and it will never be enough."

So, has SecDef Rumsfeld come up with a successful way to wage war against 
the demand for drugs?

No. There are proposals, from such as Governor Pataki and ex-drug czar 
McCaffrey that suggest changing the emphasis on how to treat drug addicts: 
treatment, instead of incarceration. "We jail about 450,000 people every 
year in the United States for nonviolent drug offenses." Speaking of civil 
wars, Mr. Pimentel gives us some perspective: The Confederate Congress 
called, at the outset of our Civil War, for the recruitment of 400,000 men.
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