Pubdate: Mon, 29 Jan 2001
Source: Omaha World-Herald (NE)
Copyright: 2001 Omaha World-Herald Company
Contact:  World Herald Square, Omaha, Ne., 68102
Website: http://www.omaha.com/
Forum: http://chat.omaha.com/
Author: William F. Buckley Jr., Universal Press Syndicate

DRUG WAR WON'T HALT DEMAND

New York - 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 statedreason 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 Andres
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 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
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.

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: 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
AWACS 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," Pimentel 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," 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 to 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 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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