----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 10:40 PM Subject: Rumsfeld, Will against Plan Colombia
>
> [Can the advance press on Bush's cabinet be 180 degrees wrong? Where do
> reporters get these ideas before thy repeat them ad nauseum? Yesterday
> Powell, the supposed anti-interventionist of Kosovo and the Gulf War (he
> was supposedly against both in private), endorsed a large scale expansion
> of Plan Columbia before it was a week old and before he's even finished
> being confirmed. And Rumsfeld, whose one drumbeat has been to increase
> military spending, is today reported sounding disposed against it in his
> confirmation hearing.
>
> I suppose we can also add George Will to Dennis's list of troglodytes
> against the drug war.]
>
> WASHINGTON POST
>
> Thursday, 18 January 2001
>
> **************
> * COMMENTARY *
> **************
>
> The Real Enemy in the Drug War
> ------------------------------
>
> By George F. Will
>
> With the delicacy of someone seasoned by much experience near the summit
> of government, Donald Rumsfeld has indicated strong skepticism about a
> policy from which this country may reap a bumper crop of regrets. Asked
> about the $ 1.6 billion -- so far -- undertaking to help fight the drug
> war in Colombia, Rumsfeld said he had not formulated an opinion. But he
> embroidered his agnosticism with thoughts antithetical to the program for
> which George W. Bush, during the campaign, indicated support.
>
> In his confirmation hearing, Rumsfeld, the next secretary of defense, said
> combating illicit drugs is "overwhelmingly a demand problem," and added:
> "If demand persists, it's going to get what it wants. And if it isn't from
> Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."
>
> Indeed. In authorizing the aid for Colombia, Congress demanded,
> delusionally, the elimination of all of Colombia's coca and opium poppy
> cultivation by 2005. That would almost certainly mean a commensurate
> increase in cultivation in Colombia's neighbors. One reason Colombia is
> the source of nearly 90 percent of the world's cocaine and a growing
> portion of heroin is that U.S. pressure on coca and poppy production in
> countries contiguous to Colombia, especially Peru and Bolivia, drove
> production into Colombia, where coca production has increased 140 percent
> -- to 300,000 acres -- in five years.
>
> Now pressure on Colombia is pushing production into Colombia's neighbors.
> The New York Times reports that cocaine processing labs have recently been
> found in Ecuador's Amazon region. This is evidence that local peasants,
> who have crossed the border in recent years to work in the cocaine
> business, are "returning with the drug expertise they have acquired in
> Colombia."
>
> Regarding the use of the U.S. military in policing this region, it is
> depressing to have to say something that should be obvious, but here goes:
> The military's task is to deter war and, should deterrence fail, to
> swiftly and successfully inflict lethal violence on enemies. It is
> difficult enough filling an all-volunteer military with motivated warriors
> without blurring the distinction between military service and police work.
>
> The $ 1.6 billion for Colombia will mostly pay for helicopters that
> Colombia's military will use to attack drug factories and 17,000 Marxist
> guerrillas, who are the world's most affluent insurgents. They use drug
> trafficking, taxes on coca production, extortion and ransoms -- grossing
> perhaps as much as $ 900 million a year -- to wage a war now in its fourth
> decade. The guerrillas also are opposed by right-wing paramilitary forces
> -- 8,000 strong and growing -- that are increasingly involved in drug
> trafficking.
>
> Speaking of narcotics, Colombia has a "peace process" with a familiar
> asymmetry: Colombia's government wants to tame the guerrillas with a peace
> agreement; the guerrillas want to topple the government. Colombia's
> government is creating a second demilitarized zone in the country, this
> one for the second-largest guerrilla group to use as a haven during peace
> talks. But The Washington Post reports that since the first such haven was
> created two years ago for the largest guerrilla group, that group has used
> it "to increase drug cultivation, stage military offensives, train new
> recruits and hold more than 450 soldiers and police officers captive in
> open-air pens."
>
> Kidnapping has become industrialized in Colombia, and assassins can be
> hired for "a few pesos" according to Brian Michael Jenkins. Writing in the
> National Interest quarterly, Jenkins, an analyst of political violence and
> international crime, says Colombia's 30,000 murders unrelated to war
> translate into 100 deaths per 100,000 Colombians, a rate which in the
> United States would mean 250,000 murders a year (more than 10 times the
> actual U.S. rate of recent years).
>
> Colombia, Jenkins says, is a combination success story and tragedy. The
> unemployment rate is 20 percent, and will go higher if defoliants and
> other anti-drug efforts put small growers and processors out of business.
> But Colombia has Latin America's fourth-largest economy and one of its
> highest literacy rates. It has 40 flourishing universities and has never
> defaulted on its debts. Yet a Gallup poll reveals that 40 percent of
> Colombians have considered emigrating and 60 percent know someone who has
> emigrated in the past two years.
>
> Colombia's drug-related agonies are largely traceable to U.S. cities.
> Although one-third of Colombia's cocaine goes to Europe, America's annual
> $ 50 billion demand is a powerful suction pulling in several hundred tons
> of cheaply made, easily transportable and staggeringly profitable
> substances. Here is the arithmetic of futility: About one-third of cocaine
> destined for the United States is interdicted, yet the street price has
> been halved in the past decade of fighting the drug war on the supply
> side.
>
> Copyright 2001 The Washington Post
>
>
>