TV REVIEWS : Echoes of ‘Nam in ‘Lost in Bolivia’

This is Walter Cronkite, then CBS’ man, reporting in 1965 on the U.S. military escalation in Vietnam:

“It seemed clear that, having made the courageous decision that communism’s advance must be stopped in Asia and that guerrilla warfare as a means to a political end must be finally discouraged, we had fully committed ourselves to a war to the finish. . . .”

This is Peter Jennings, now ABC’s man, reporting in 1992 on the U.S. effort to stop cocaine production in Bolivia:

“President Clinton will inherit a cocaine war in Bolivia that the United States cannot win.”

Once, network anchors reporting from the front-lines would explain why any U.S. operation was justified. In the late stages of the Vietnam war, that all changed, and the latest edition of “Peter Jennings Reporting” subtitled, “The Cocaine War, Lost in Bolivia” (10 p.m. tonight, Channel 7), is a paragon of post-Vietnam tough news.

Interestingly, the word Vietnam is never spoken during this hour, but the parallels become painfully obvious: The terminally optimistic U.S. ambassador (Charles R. Bowers) sure of ultimate victory; a high-tech military operation out-foxed by an enemy who knows the jungle; a regime allied with and funded by the U.S. and reportedly corrupt to the gills.

And, like Vietnam, even “wins” are losses, as in the major operation that Jennings follows with bloodhound tenacity in the last half of the report.

U.S. interdiction efforts can’t compete with Bolivian politics and economics. The harsh reality is that the desperately poor, landlocked South American country bases its economy on the cocaine trade.

Despite his tough-guy approach, though, Jennings fails to ask anyone the key questions: How will Bolivia redirect its cash crop production from cocaine to real agriculture? And who will direct it?