Dems cut help to Columbia war on drug thugs

Houston Chronicle:

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, in Washington yet again to lobby for trade and aid, will be greeted by Democrats planning a dramatic change in U.S. support for the South American nation. The program would veer away from military and anti-drug efforts and toward development and human rights projects.

This week, a House Appropriations subcommittee drafting the foreign aid budget cut Colombia's overall aid package by 10 percent, from $590 million to about $530 million.

The country is expected to get an additional $150 million in purely military and police assistance through a separate appropriation in the defense budget bill.

The biggest change, however, is that now that Democrats control Congress, they intend to alter the ratio between military and humanitarian foreign aid to the country.

Instead of allocating close to 80 percent to the Colombian military and drug-eradication programs, as has been the case for the past decade, lawmakers are proposing that only 65 percent of the total aid package go to the military. The remainder would be designated as economic and humanitarian aid.

The shift is due in part to mounting evidence that Colombia is losing its war on drugs, and in part to growing concern on Capitol Hill that Uribe's government might be tainted by ties to paramilitary death squads.

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This week, the White House reported that coca acreage in Colombia jumped by 9 percent in 2006. That news follows a 26 percent jump in coca acreage in 2005.

At present, almost as much coca is grown in Colombia as there was in 2001 when Plan Colombia began. The original goal was to cut coca acreage in half within five years.

"To insist at this point that more spraying will somehow deter farmers from replanting is not just unrealistic, it's delusional," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.

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So will less spraying deter people from growing more coca? Somehow less spraying does not sound like a deterrent at all. It is like the Democrats idiotic suggestion of cutting funding to the Iraqi army because they are losing the battle in an area. Cutting resources to those who are fighting our enemies makes no sense and the Democrat plan for Columbia makes no sense. It is just another example of why Democrats should never be trusted with national security matters.