San Francisco Bay Guardian Op-Ed
June 14, 2000
By Medea Benjamin

At the very time we as a nation are reflecting on our disastrous intervention in Vietnam 30 years ago, our political leaders are blindly committing us to another quagmire of Vietnam proportions, this time in Colombia.

With virtually no public discussion, Congress, at the urging of the Clinton administration, is about to pass a $1.3 billion "aid" package to Colombia. Presented as part of our war on drugs, the plan will do nothing to alleviate the drug crisis here at home and will drag the United States into another terrible civil war.

Backers of this bill insist that its purpose is to fight drugs, not guerrillas. But such distinctions are meaningless in the Colombian jungle. While guerrillas began fighting the Colombian government long before the cocaine boom began in the late 1970s, today drugs and politics seamlessly mix, with both right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrilla groups supporting themselves with drug money.

By supporting the Colombian military -- a military that is annually labeled by international human rights organizations as the worst human rights abuser in the western hemisphere and has close ties to the paramilitary forces -- U.S. politicians are senselessly involving us in this volatile mix of guns and drugs.

Colombia is already the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid. More than 250 U.S. military personnel, including Green Berets and Navy SEALs, are already based in Colombia. Elite U.S.-trained counterinsurgency units, supplied with U.S. intelligence, travel in U.S. helicopters to remote parts of Colombia to confront guerrillas. These counterinsurgency troops often work in tandem with right-wing paramilitary death squads that account for 75 percent of the country's human rights abuses.

The most tragic result of U.S. military largesse will be the derailing of the already tenuous peace process. For the past 18 months the Colombian government and guerrilla forces have been engaged in a delicate search for peace. The massive U.S. subsidy to the Colombian military gives military hard-liners reason to oppose the peace process, and it makes the guerrillas wary of the commitment of the Colombian government. In fact, a peace negotiator for the guerrilla group FARC, Raul Reyes, calls the package "a declaration of war by the U.S."

One must also wonder about a strategy for reducing drugs that has a proven track record of failure. Despite years of efforts to eradicate drug crops, coca production in the region has only increased. Pouring even more money into eradication will only succeed in shifting production from one part of the country to another, or to neighboring countries like Peru and Ecuador. As long as the demand remains high, supply will follow.

With all the evidence stacked against this bill, why has the Clinton administration continued to push it, and why are a majority of members of Congress poised to vote for it?

The package seems to be driven more by domestic politics than by the needs of the Colombian people. In this election year no one wants to be accused of being "soft on drugs." And politicians have been fiercely lobbied by oil companies and arms manufacturers who stand to benefit from the package. Since 1997 just five companies -- Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco, Enron, United Technologies, and Bell Helicopter Textron -- have given more than $3.4 million in political action committee and soft money contributions to federal candidates and parties.

The oil companies want a strong military to help secure their investments, and the defense contractors are anxious to receive the $400 million earmarked to purchase their companies' helicopters.

Unlike oil companies and arms manufacturers, the ordinary people of Colombia -- those who stand to lose the most from an escalation of their nation's civil war -- do not have powerful political action committees. Nor do those at home who are suffering the devastating effects of drug addiction. If our politicians would address those needs and vote against this bill, we could avoid another postmortem hand-wringing about getting mired in this devastating civil war.

Medea Benjamin is the founding director of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based international human rights organization.