Congress is sending $1.3 billion to Colombia for its war on drugs. The majority view, shared by the president, is that this is necessary because, after the coca leaves are harvested, processed and shipped, it inevitably becomes our war on drugs.

The minority view is that Congress is sending $1.3 to Colombia to fight a civil war against insurgents who just happen to be supporting their rebellion by providing protection to the drug cartels because Colombia’s recent history of utterly corrupt government made rebellion the only option.

Concerns that the United States is about to get itself involved in another Vietnam are valid, and not just because the jungles of South America have the potential to be quagmires equal to those of Southeast Asia. It is the political similarities that are startling — a war against one evil, whether cocaine or communism, cannot be won by supporting a government despised by its own people.

Colombia President Andres Pastrana is sincere in his desire to negotiate a peace with the rebels and to bring to his country, after more than 30 years of terror, a government the people can respect. In office just two years, he has pursued his anti-drug Plan Colombia with diligence and considerable courage (including meeting with guerillas in their jungle hideouts), but his control over the military is tenuous and, with violence unabated, his hold on office may be slipping.

President Pastrana has staked everything on negotiations with the rebels and the negotiations are not going well. The rebels insist they will not cooperate with a coca eradication effort until that source of income for people in the countryside is replaced with something else. But of course no one will invest in economic development in Columbia until the warfare stops and the cartels eliminated.

There may be a way out. A group of European nations, their populations also devastated by coke, are proposing the establishment of a fund that will pay peasants a livable wage for manually eradicating the plants, replacing the current system of forced eradication by the military. If implemented with international verification, this program could break the cycle, actually reduce drug production, give the negotiations a chance of succeeding and, perhaps most importantly, give the people of Colombia reason to look at their govbernment with hope instead of fear.

Unfortunately, mere mention of this approach during the debates in Congress elicited accusations that proponents were soft on drugs. Instead, Colombia peasants will get 60 of America’s best helicopters so national police and army units, with assistance from U.S. advisors, can raid coca fields and rebel lairs. For now, at least, U.S. policy is that eliminating the rebels will eliminate the drugs. There is a war to win. Winning the hearts and minds will come later.