Pubdate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001
Source: Vero Beach Press Journal(FL)
Section: Opinion
Contact:  PO Box 1268, Vero Beach, FL32961
Website: http://www.tcpalm.com/vero/index.shtml
Author: William F. Buckley Jr., Universal Press Syndicate

SUPPLY-SIDE DRUG WAR FUTILE

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.

Newest FOL

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 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 Colombian 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 Ecuadoran president who since then has been ousted from 
power, fleeing to the United States, where he resists efforts to return him 
to Ecuador to face charges of abuse of power.

Wiggling Through

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 just not 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 in Phoenix, 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.

'Particular Waste'

"The money in Colombia is a particular waste," he comments, "in that the 
country is fighting a 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 Secretary Rumsfeld come up with a successful way to wage war 
against the demand for drugs? No. There are proposals, from such as Gov. 
George Pataki of New York and ex-drug czar Gen. Barry 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," according to Mr. Pimentel.

Speaking of civil wars, 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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