Speech by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Missouri), March 29, 2000

Speech by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Missouri), March 29, 2000
[Page: H1521]
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I speak in favor of this amendment. No one will take a back seat to me when it comes to drug eradication or no one can take a back seat to me in fighting drugs. I use this opportunity to explain that there is a better alternative, a better way of doing things in fighting drugs in the country of Colombia. As the strategy is now explained to us, it is called `Push Into Southern Colombia.' It is a 6-year plan. It is one that is aimed at the guerillas and not one that is aimed primarily at eradicating the drug traffic.

For example, this package appears to be focused on guerilla-controlled coca-growing areas to the exclusion of areas controlled by the paramilitaries and other narcotraffickers. The paramilitary groups linked to the drug trade will continue to operate with impunity until the last 2 years of this 6-year plan.

This cannot be the case. We must do a better job in strategic thought on how to fight these drugs and the drug trafficking. What we must do is to follow the strategy that was successful in the country of Peru. There is an alternative to the so-called Push Into Southern Colombia strategy that needs to be considered and it is the experience of reducing the coca cultivation by the country of Peru by doing three things.

Number one, an aggressive air interdiction of drug traffickers. In other words, if you fly, you die. Number two, a comprehensive AID alternative crop development program. And, number three, crop eradication.

The Colombian government has not yet matched the Peruvian government's demonstrated willingness to interdict the drug traffickers' aircraft. The Colombian government should be encouraged to match that commitment. When combined with a successful effort to interdict the air bridge, a strong ground interdiction strategy at the three main points that drugs must have to cross the Andes Mountains, the road to Pasto, the road through Florencia and the road through Villavicencio, ground interdiction focus must be kept on those three areas. We cannot do this by piecemeal.

I think that those military thinkers, whether they be Colombian or whether they be American who make suggestions can do a much better job. We must interdict the drugs in the air, force them through the three Andes passes, and stop them and eradicate them there. That is the only sound way of getting at the drug trafficking.

This other way, the strategy that I think is an erroneous one, is one that will last some 6 years and might cause us well to find ourselves involved in a guerilla warfare; and the last thing in the world we want to do is to have American young men and young women involved in that. I doubt the American people would support a counterinsurgency campaign, and yet that is where we are headed.

The administration's continued insistence that the package is entirely counternarcotic, however, has made impossible any debate on the merits of counterinsurgency. Let us get this strategy right; let us think it out; let us interdict it by air and through the three passes as opposed to the manner in which they suggest. I therefore will vote for and urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

As of March 30, 2000, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:H29MR0-173: