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From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:30:17 -0500 (CDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: SFC: EDITORIAL - 'Mission creep' in Colombia
[NOTE: Seasoned Colombia observers readily confirm the SFC
editorial, although many would add that the U.S. has already been
up to its neck in the deep muddy of the Colombian civil war, all
the while trying to maintain the veil of counternarcotics
assistance. -DG]
==========================================
Sound familiar? It is. In the early 1960s,
this was how the United States involvement
in Vietnam began.
_____________ ==========================================
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, 29 July 2001
*************
* EDITORIAL *
*************
'Mission creep' in Colombia
---------------------------
Eradicating coca production in Colombia is like eliminating crabgrass from
a lawn: As soon as you think it's gone, it pops up somewhere else.
That is precisely what has happened in Colombia, a nation that has
received $1.3 billion from the United States to stop the production and
traffic in narcotics and to fumigate coca fields by air.
But it hasn't worked. New coca and poppy fields keep appearing in remote
areas of the countryside.
Frustrated by its failed policy, the United States is now considering a
new plan. One of the three U.S. battalions would train Colombian soldiers
to close down drug labs protected by guerrilla forces. Instructed by the
Green Berets, soldiers would be taught to avoid shooting lab workers and
to secure the space for processing by the Colombia police.
These rules of engagement sound fine on paper. But they defy common sense.
As a recent Rand report explains, neither American nor Colombian troops
can attack coca fields or drug labs without engaging in military battles
with the guerrilla forces that surround them.
Still, the United States insists on maintaining the charade that our
expanding role in Colombia's four-decade civil war is exclusively about
drug interdiction. According to the Los Angeles Times, Anne W. Patterson,
the American ambassador stationed in Bogota, recently told a group of
reporters, "We can do a lot under the counternarcotics rubric."
Indeed, we can. As advisers, U.S. soldiers or our privately paid
contractors can train Colombian soldiers in what amounts to a
counterinsurgent war against guerrillas. Without a goal or an exit
strategy, it is, in effect, a war of attrition.
Sound familiar? It is. In the early 1960s, this was how the United States
involvement in Vietnam began.
Copyright 2001 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
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