Plan to Use Military in Drug Fight Dies

An ambitious proposal to enlist 10,000 U.S. soldiers in the war against drugs on the nation’s Southwest border has died a quiet death on Capitol Hill, the victim of continuing disagreement over whether the Pentagon should have any role in fighting the Mexican narcotic cartels.

The proposal, which twice won overwhelming support in the House this summer, was never embraced by the Senate. It was stricken late last week from a conference committee report by Senate and House negotiators on the 1998 defense authorization bill.

On Tuesday, the House passed the bill without the amendment to vastly increase the U.S. military presence on the border.

Undeterred, the proposal’s chief sponsor vowed to try again to place the might of the American military behind this country’s crime-fighting apparatus on the border. “The cartels have too much power,” Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio) said in an interview. “There’s just too much money and firepower down there.”

Critics charged that Traficant’s proposal would set dangerous precedents in the divisions of responsibility between the Pentagon and law enforcement officials.

That was one reason Senate conferees prevailed in getting the amendment dropped from the defense measure, according to John DeCrosta, a spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He said Senate leaders also noted that each state can deploy its own National Guard to supplement law enforcement efforts in fighting drug trafficking. And, DeCrosta said, there was concern about federal troop reductions.

“You can’t just keep piling missions on,” he said.

Traficant’s proposal came at a time of heightened emotions over the support that the armed forces already had been providing local and federal law enforcement agencies in protecting the 2,000-mile border from Texas to California.

In May, a U.S. Marine corporal inadvertently killed a teenage Texas goat herder, leading to the Pentagon’s decision to temporarily stop using ground troops in anti-drug missions until officials examine a full review of the eight-year-old program.

“It is not clear to me that this mission is any longer necessarily required,” Barry R. McCaffrey, a former army general who now serves as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in an interview. “Personally, I always felt uncomfortable with it.”

Traficant contended that, since U.S. soldiers conduct other peacekeeping operations abroad, they should be actively involved in drug-fighting efforts.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), a former Border Patrol supervisor in El Paso, was among those who prefer to keep the military out of police work. “Border Patrol agents are trained to understand the terrain and the habitants of the area they are patrolling . . . “ he said. “Military training promotes a more confrontational approach under generally hostile environments. So clearly, the military is not properly suited for patrolling border areas.”