Is Washington a Friend or Foe?

It took years of official neglect for Colombia’s cocaine producers to acquire the power to kill, maim and terrorize their countrymen into tolerating their deadly trade. It took the same brand of neglect to allow Americans to acquire a craving for the drug broad enough and strong enough to turn producers into billionaires.

Now, perhaps too late, many Colombians are putting their lives on the line to help Americans break their habit--the hard way, by choking off supply. But Washington has not done nearly enough to show its gratitude the only way that would count--by putting more of its energy on the line trying to slow down both supply and demand.

Official Colombia is at war with its cocaine kingpins, who are turning the country into a land of open wounds. By one count, assassins working for the cartels are killing judges, policemen and innocent citizens at the rate of 60 a week. Since August alone, cartel shock troops have exploded 200 bombs. Wednesday’s bombing tore the face off a 12-story building housing Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI, killed more than 60 bystanders and injured 400. Cartel henchmen are suspected of putting a bomb aboard a Colombian airliner that exploded in the air last month, killing 111 passengers and crew.

The United States has committed few resources to helping the Latin American centers of the cocaine trade attack supplies at the source. There seems to be no urgency in delivering even the most meager amounts. Last September, President Bush promised $261 million to Bolivia and Peru, the two largest growers of the coca leaf that is used to produce cocaine, to help them suppress the coca trade. But the money is still stuck in the congressional pipeline with no hope that it can be delivered before spring.

Consider, too, that Washington cautionsly handles the question of why it can’t do more to disrupt the large export traffic in American chemicals to Colombia where they are used to turn coca leaves into cocaine. It seems clear, as Times writer Doug Jehl reported this week, that the major suppliers of chemicals used in processing cocaine are from the U.S. The reply of U.S. chemical manufacturers? They warn that if their products don’t get through, Colombia will buy them from competing European suppliers. True enough, perhaps, but it’s just that sort of response that makes Latin Americans wonder about the sincerity of the American commitment to fight drugs.