Evil Empire

Colombian aid: pure hypocrisy

A new front has opened in the infamous War on Drugs, and this time "war" is not an analogy. On Wed., Sept. 27, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson signed an agreement with Colombian President Andres Pastrana that will provide $1.3 billion to aid the Latin American country in her civil war and curb the influx of heroin and cocaine to America.

According to Patterson, the first phase of the aid package will be used to "strengthen democracy" and reform the country's justice system, as well as promote "alternative [economic] development." In other words, get Colombians to make money in ways other than growing cocaine.

However, only about $300 million goes toward Patterson's lofty goals. The other $1 billion goes toward kicking the crap out of Colombia's Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), who have been waging a brutal rebellion against the government for the past 40 years. The rebels are funded in large part by cocaine exports. Clinton's aid package would train and equip the Colombian military to combat the rebels.

It seems obvious that the government ought to rule Colombia, but history paints a more complex picture: the current government is an outgrowth of the National Front, an alliance formed by liberal and conservative forces after the fall of Colombia's military dictatorship in 1957. Originally a coalition of differing ideologies, it soon became a political and economic monolith opposed to reform in the poverty-stricken country. By the 1960s, the National Front was using the military to suppress political opposition.

Naturally, a popular uprising formed against the oppressive regime. Throughout the '60s and '70s, FARC seized huge sections of the country and funded their insurrection by selling cocaine. The government, in conjunction with the military and private paramilitary units funded partly by drug traffickers, has waged a brutal campaign against the rebels. Government-sanctioned death squads ravage the countryside and terrorize and kill peasants who are in any way sympathetic to the revolutionary forces.

Thus, the hypocrisy of Clinton's aid package begins to take shape: not only is America funding a government that terrorizes and murders its own civilians, but it is taking sides with government forces that have as much of a stake in the coke industry as the guerillas they are fighting. America cannot fight her "war on drugs" without dabbling in Colombia's political struggle because they are inextricably linked. And, since both sides of the conflict are supported by the cocaine industry, the anti-drug platform is a lie.

Then why on earth would we want to throw $1 billion at a regime of dubious moral stature in the name of a phony cause? According to a Newsweek special report published Mon., Mar. 27, the Clinton administration began to support intervention in Colombia only after an opinion poll said that the American public saw the President as "weak on drugs," and were likely to blame the Democratic Party, and him in particular, for increased drug use in America.

Well, that's enough to make any legacy-obsessed politician rethink things. The intervention in Colombia would be sure to boost his image as an anti-drug President. But it gets more sinister.

Turns out that the poll was commissioned by none other than Lockheed Martin, the giant defense contractor interested in selling its P-3 radar plane, used to track drug smugglers. In addition, United Technologies Corp. and Textron, both manufacturers of attack helicopters, have contributed a total of $1.25 million in the past several years to political parties. The bulk of the money donated last year by UT, historically a Republican backer, went to the Democratic Party. And most of that contribution was deposited in Democratic Party accounts on Fri., Dec. 31, 1999, just 11 days before Clinton announced the Colombia aid package.

You don't need to be Oliver Stone to see the menacing military-industrial complex looming large.

The Columbia aid package will accomplish none of its supposed aims. What it will do is deepen and intensify a 50-year-old civil war that is decimating the people of Colombia—while fattening the wallets of American politicians and defense contractors who wish to hijack the nation's foreign policy program and buy out all opposition.

Amidst the burning coke fields, roving death squads, and insurgent narco-guerillas in the jungles of Colombia, one has to ask: why are we getting involved? And, more importantly, who is really making the decision: our democratically elected President or the arms industry?

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