Pubdate: Tue, 29 Aug 2000
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  P.O.Box 15779, Sacramento CA 95852
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Author: Arianna Huffington,  http://www.ariannaonline.com/
Note: Arianna's columns appear in many newspapers, including the Los 
Angeles Times, New York Post and Chicago Sun-Times. MAP newshawks have 
found this column, under different titles, in the New York Daily News, 
Salon and the Abilene Reporter-News so far.
Bookmark: MAP's link to articles by Arianna:
http://www.mapinc.org/authors/huffington+arianna

BUSH AND GORE ON COLOMBIA: ASK US NO QUESTIONS, WE'LL TELL YOU NO LIES

There is something unsettling about the press coverage of the
presidential race. Last week, President Bill Clinton signed a waiver
of the human-rights provisions imposed by Congress on the $1.3 billion
drug-war package to Colombia, and not a single reporter bothered to
ask the candidates -- one of whom, after all, will have to deal with
the consequences -- what they thought of it.

Do George W. Bush and Al Gore support our becoming embroiled in a
three-way civil war? We know where they stand on "family" (they're for
it), but not whether they are in favor of more than a billion dollars
being spent to fight the drug war abroad while 3.5 million addicts at
home can't get the treatment they need. Or whether they endorse the
cavalier abandonment of the congressionally mandated human-rights benchmarks.

We'd like to know. But since no one in the media is asking, maybe each
of the candidates should, on a daily basis, hold a press conference to
tell the people they're asking to vote for them how they would deal
with the key events of the day. So on Wednesday, when the president,
with his drug czar in tow, is in Colombia for a five-hour visit to
symbolically hand a gigantic check to President Andres Pastrana, it
would be really useful for Gore and Bush to tell us how their drug-war
policy would differ from this administration's. How much of his own
man is Gore really?

And how much will Bush be influenced by Enron, his tenth biggest
backer, which has major oil interests in Colombia? It's time for the
candidates to be pulled back from pontificating on "military
preparedness" in general and forced to address specifically their own
preparedness to engage our military in the Colombian army's
counterinsurgency campaign.

Sandy Berger, the president's history-impaired national security
advisor, dismissed the parallels being drawn between Colombia and
Vietnam -- which also began with the deployment of a few military
advisors and more than a few million dollars in military aid. "I think
you can get paralyzed by the foreign policy of analogy," he said.
Berger, who seemsparalyzed by the prospect of any ratiocination, would
do well to keep in mind that, as Santayana put it, "Those who do not
remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Nor is Vietnam the only part of our past that should be remembered. As
recently as March 1999, Clinton apologized to the people of Guatemala
for America's involvement in that country's civil war: "Support for
military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and
widespread repression was wrong .... The United States must not repeat
that mistake." He now proceeds to repeat that mistake.

The evidence amassed by human-rights groups overwhelmingly shows that
the Colombian military continues to allow its paramilitary allies to
massacre hundreds of unarmed civilians each year. And only two weeks
ago, the army itself was responsible for an attack that killed six
elementary school children on a hiking trip.

"I don't know if President Clinton enjoyed apologizing to the people
of Guatemala," Carlos M. Salinas of Amnesty International USA told me,
"but he's all but guaranteeing that some future U.S. president will
have to apologize to the Colombian people for the dirty little war
we're about to escalate."

Just as that apology will sound familiar, so does the policy that will
lead to it. Of course, administration officials continue to deny it.
"There is no plan, and there is no proposal, and there is no idea of
committing American forces in Colombia to do anything but ... provide
training," said Thomas Pickering, U.S. undersecretary of state for
political affairs.

There may be no "plan," but there are already five -- albeit very
underpublicized -- American casualties.

Last July, U.S. Army pilot Jennifer Odom, co-pilot Capt. Jose Santiago
and crew members Thomas G. Moore, T. Bruce Cluff and Ray Krueger were
killed when their plane crashed -- or, as Odom's family believes, was
shot down -- while on a top-secret reconnaissance mission in southern
Colombia. If you haven't heard about these military casualties of our
drug war in Colombia, that was the intention.

The flag-draped coffins arrived in the dead of night, in a ceremony
that was closed to the press and unattended by any senior White House
officials.

Ironically, around the same time the administration was trumpeting the
lack of body bags from Kosovo, five were quietly arriving from Colombia.

But if we can't get a true picture of what the future holds from our
own leaders, we can at least look to the leader of the Colombian armed
forces, Gen. Fernando Tapias. "There will be peace," he said in a
recent interview, "but first there will be war. With or without Plan
Colombia, things are going to get worse." And with more than $1
billion worth of gasoline poured on the fire, does anyone doubt that
they are going to get a whole lot worse?

I, for one, would like to know if our next president has given it a
thought. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake