U.S.-Colombia Foreign Policy Breeds Hatred
Like so many academics before him in the tortured history of U.S. foreign policy, Michael Shifter misses the mark completely (“Colombia Policy Should Not Be Terror’s Next Victim,” Opinion, Nov. 11). Current U.S. policy toward Colombia is a disaster waiting to happen. What we are doing there is setting the stage for the next generation of anti-U.S. hatred, this time in a neighboring region of the world.
The picture that accompanied the article was worth 1,000 essays by wishy-washy, ivory-tower analysts afraid to rock the boat. It showed an airplane poisoning fertile farmland in a futile effort to stop the growing of a crop (coca) that has been produced in the region for thousands of years. We will never stop the production or consumption of cocaine. What we will do is destroy the livelihood of thousands of peasants, wreak mass environmental destruction on the sensitive Amazon environment and give a new group of poor and desperate people reason to vilify and seek revenge against the U.S.
Gerald Kamin
Los Angeles
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