The Public Policy: Roll Over Colombia
Bovard, James
THE PUBLIC POLICY by James Bovard Roll Over Colombia T his has not been a good summer for the U.S. drug war in Colombia. On July 23, five American officers died when their high-tech spy plane...
...Yet after continual escalation in the amount of spraying, the amount of land in coca production is four times greater than what it was in 1994, and now exceeds 300 square miles...
...Republicans generally demanded that the Clinton administration provide far more aid, more equipment, and more support for the Colombian government...
...environmentalists complain that the herbicide attacks are a major cause of deforestation...
...Coca production is skyrocketing—doubling since 1996 and, according to the General Accounting Office, expected to increase another 5o percent in the next two years...
...58 October i999 • The American Spectator a penchant for atrocities...
...On July 16 Drug Czar JAMES BOVARD is the author of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St...
...Yet the congressmen showed little or no curiosity as to what the U.S...
...intercepts of guerrilla radio messages...
...CIA analysts estimate that only about a quarter of the aerial fumigation actually kills the coca bushes...
...laws make that crop zo times more profitable than any other...
...civilian pilots of crop dusters have died in recent years, shot down by guerrillas or farmers or paramilitary forces...
...We'd rather fight than quit...
...A 950-member "anti-narcotics battalion" is supposed to take the field later this year...
...For the Clinton administration, the inevitable answer to this problem is more U.S...
...Special Forces, former Green Berets, Gulf War veterans and even a few figures from covert CIA-backed operations in Central America during the 1980's...
...Nor does there seem to be anyone on Capitol Hill with the will or wit to challenge McCaffrey's narco-doomsday scenario...
...The U.S...
...aid to the Colombian military...
...foreign aid to military organizations with Y_ As drug war gives way to civil war, the U.S...
...Dow Chemical, the product's inventor, protested strongly that the product was not safe for use in the Andes and surrounding areas...
...politicians who admit or get caught using cocaine suffer little or no consequences from the voters...
...Much of the glyphosate dumped from the planes misses the target acreage, according to pesticide experts...
...There are approximately zoo U.S...
...ambassador to Colombia, Curtis Kamman, dismissed such concerns: "For a net environmental positive effect, getting rid of coca is the best course for Colombia...
...Many farmers see the war on drugs as a war on farmers, and the herbicide spraying further undercuts the legitimacy of a government that already has miserably served its people...
...The Clinton administration in recent years has intensely pressured the Colombian government to allow a much more toxic chemical to be dumped across the land, which would permit the planes to fly at much higher altitudes, Kosovo-44 Despite almost $1 billion in anti-narcotics aid, the country supplies almost all the cocaine consumed in the United States...
...drug policy in Colombia "is like Vietnam...we will give [the Colombian government] just enough to never quite win, to never quite succeed, and possibly fail, but we'll never give them enough, early enough, to get the jump on those they're fighting...
...The Pentagon trotted out the usual explanation: out-of-date maps...
...But DEA chief administrator Donnie Marshall recently testified that "the DEA has not arrived at the conclusion that the FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] are drug traffickers...
...tax dollars...
...Mark Souder warned that U.S...
...aid would allow the Colombian government to win a decisive victory over the guerrillas any time soon...
...The Clinton administration has largely succeeded in sweeping the deaths under the rug...
...The Dallas Morning News recently noted reports that "tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are going into covert operations across southern Colombia employing, among others, U.S...
...Colombian environmental minister Juan Mayr publicly declared last year that the crop spraying program has been a failure and warned, "We can't permanently fumigate the country...
...The Colombian government briefly agreed last year to allow tebuthiuron (known as SPIKE zo) to be used on a test basis on coca...
...as Robert Novak reported in his column, there was no television coverage or presidential lip-biting when the bodies were returned, in the middle of the night, to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware...
...aid to the Nicaraguan Contras...
...Most U.S...
...personnel are now actively training the Colombia military...
...escalates both...
...Considering the failure of the U.S...
...Coca farmers have responded to the attacks in part by going deeper into the jungles and hacking out new land for planting...
...Congress is effectively letting itself be taken for a ride wherever the Clinton administration wants to go, just as long as the administration's point people sound sufficiently bellicose against drugs...
...Three U.S...
...The Colombian military is renown for losing almost all the major engagements it fights with the guerrillas...
...It is doubtful that increased U.S...
...Souder apparently forgot that American presidents have made the war on coca in Colombia a top issue for more than a decade...
...style...
...The prestige of the administration's policy suffered another setback when Laurie Hiett, the wife of the commander of U.S...
...Other observers speculate that the plane was shot or forced down by Marxist guerrillas...
...The U.S...
...The Colombian minister of health strongly opposed the initiation of spraying in 1992...
...Martin's Press...
...Rep...
...anti-drug aid has gone to pay for chemical warfare: blanketing coca-growing areas with herbicides from crop-duster planes and helicopter gun ships...
...The Colombian government backed out of the agreement after a New York Times front-page story sparked intense controversy over the plan...
...American-funded drug suppression efforts have resulted in a "push down, pop up" effect: The harder the U.S...
...Moreover, even if the guerrillas are defeated, it's ludicrous to pretend that Colombians will no longer have an incentive to grow coca—as long as U.S...
...Ten years ago, President George Bush warned Colombian drug dealers that they were "no match for an angry America...
...On August 6, the House Committee on International Relations convened a hearing on the Colombian crisis...
...Congress in 1996 prohibited any U.S...
...Colombians justifiably see Americans as hypocrites for demanding great sacrifices of foreigners while prominent U.S...
...Even as the Clinton administration decreed clean air standards strictly controlling Americans' exposure to chemicals that pose little or no health threat, it sought to deluge a foreign land with a toxic chemical in a way that would be forbidden in the U.S...
...Many farmers raising non-coca crops have been devastated by herbicides dropped indiscriminately on their fields...
...works to repress coca production in one area, the more likely production is to start up in another...
...military advisers already on site, and U.S...
...The Colombian army has a poor human rights record, but few in Congress seem to care about the administration's open flouting of the law—in stark contrast to the fury that erupted in Democratic-controlled Congresses during the 1980's over the Reagan administration's violations of the Boland amendments prohibiting direct U.S...
...Dan Burton bewailed: "There is no war on drugs being waged by this administration, unless you count the nearly $200 million General McCaffrey spends annually for...television ads and these Frisbees and key chains...
...government to eradicate marijuana growing at home, a foreign government with far fewer resources cannot be expected to suppress coca growing on its huge territory...
...Colombia now supplies roughly three-quarters of the heroin and almost all the cocaine consumed in the United States...
...It is time to admit that, regardless of how many temper tantrums U.S...
...military anti-drug operations in Colombia, was indicted on August 4 for shipping kilos of cocaine via embassy mail to contacts in New York...
...is providing key intelligence to the Colombian military from U.S...
...is foisting itself deeper into a civil war that has raged in Colombia for decades...
...military intervention...
...Environmentalists warned that dumping the product over the Colombian landscape could poison ground water and permanently ruin the land for agriculture...
...The American Spectator • October 1999 59...
...The U.S...
...McCaffrey wants to give Colombia—already the third largest recipient of foreign aid, just after Israel and Egypt—even more than the Colombian government has asked for...
...On July 23, five American officers died when their high-tech spy plane went down in southern Colombia...
...rug Czar McCaffrey is arguing D that the Colombian guerrillas (a Marxist army of thugs specializing in massacres and kidnappings) are essentially a bunch of illicit drug operators and thus there should be no real limits on U.S...
...Barry McCaffrey proposed an emergency billion-dollar anti-drug package for the Andean nations, including $600 million for Colombia...
...Unfortunately, the DEA does not seem to have the same clout in the White House as the drug czar or other advocates of increased U.S...
...Colombia has received almost a billion dollars of anti-narcotics aid since 1990...
...politicians throw, the laws of supply and demand will trump posturing every time...
...military is already doing in Colombia...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
