WASHINGTON -- President Clinton appeared to be merely stating the obvious earlier this year when he stood in Bogota and declared "This is not Vietnam." He was, in fact, speaking metaphorically as he waived the requirement that would have lead to the prosecution of prominent members of Colombian military for murder and approved the transfer of a billion dollars of arms and training to that nation's armed forces. "There won't be American involvement in a shooting war."
That same day The Washington Post offered its support of the aid, designed to expand Colombia's armed forces as they try to defeat leftist rebels and drive them out of drug-growing regions. "Talk of 'another Vietnam' in Colombia is irresponsible hyperbole," the Post editorialized. There will be "no introduction of U.S. combat forces," it opined.
It appears that Clinton -- the anti-war student of the mid-1960s -- and the Post -- the pro-war newspaper of that same period -- are in agreement at last on how the war should be defined. "Vietnam" to them means a guerrilla war in which U.S. troops take part in ground combat.
But the use of U.S. troops in combat was just one element in America's effort to block communist rule in South Vietnam, an effort that began long before the fateful introduction of U.S. combat divisions. The mistake of the mid-sixties was that our leaders limited the public debate to one of "how" of our goals should be achieved, rather than one concerning the goals themselves.
After Vietnam, the United States continued to follow a Vietnam-like foreign policy of backing repressive but cooperative regimes, but without deploying its own combat troops. The most appalling result of this policy was El Salvador, where in the 1980s the Pentagon, the Agency for International Development and the Central Intelligence Agency funded a five-fold expansion of the brutal Salvadoran Armed Forces as they tried to defeat leftist rebels and destroy left-leaning social movements.
In the end, over 80,000 Salvadorans were killed and one million were driven from their homes. Despite this U.S-supported carnage, efforts to obtain a military victory ultimately failed.
Today in Colombia, as was the case in El Salvador and Vietnam, the military and political strength of the rebels and the popular appeal of their grievances means that there is no military victory possible for the American-backed side, short of "destroying the village in order to save it" -- similar the U.S.' discredited policy in Vietnam. This will be true whether the troops we fund in an impossible search for victory are Colombian or American.
Despite the claims by Clinton and the Post, Colombia already is like Vietnam and El Salvador in a number of ways. Once again, millions of refugees displaced by war are straining the social and economic fabric of a country. Once again, a region's leaders are seeing an escalated war spilling over their borders. When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez talks about the need to "avoid the Vietnamization of the region," he means that military pressure in Colombia is starting to push refugees, rebels, and drug operations into Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Panama.
Once again, U.S. forces patrol the skies, providing intelligence and communication, directing if not carrying out attacks. Once again, hundreds of U.S. combat trainers and advisers are helping run the war if not carrying out attacks. Once again, top U.S. diplomatic and military planners are ignorant of the ground they are walking on.
Once again, to maintain control over a region, our leaders are escalating a civil war that they know cannot be won but are scared to say they must be settled or lost. Once again, they are dodging criticism by hiding behind a popular crusade. In Vietnam and El Salvador, the crusade was against communism; in Colombia, it's against drugs. It's a battle being undertaken despite 40 years of failed U.S. efforts not only to halt the supply but ultimately the demand by determined American consumers.
Rather than simply saying "Colombia is not Vietnam," we should be asking ourselves: "What did we learn in Vietnam and in El Salvador that can help us move wisely in Colombia?"
If we don't, the Colombians themselves will be the victims. The prospect of that should be enough to prompt us to build a sustained public response that can eventually discredit the goal of a military victory in Colombia, just as it did El Salvador and, yes, just as it did in Vietnam.
Caleb Rossiter is the author of The Chimes of Freedom
Flashing: A Personal History of the Vietnam Anti-war Movement
and the 1960s and is currently a senior fellow at the Center
for International Policy and a consultant on landmine policy at
the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.