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Kerry's National Security Advisor is a Drug War Zealot
(Sean Donahue, Counterpunch, January 26, 2004)
When Rand Beers quit his job as counter-terrorism advisor to President Bush, and signed up with John Kerry's presidential campaign, he quickly became a hero to Democratic Party loyalists and the "Anybody but Bush" crowd. But Beers, who has become Kerry's top national security advisor and would likely serve as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State in a Kerry administration, has a dark history. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and was one of the chief architects of and apologists for the United States' cruel policies in Colombia. . . . Beers was most closely associated with the disastrous aerial crop fumigation program the U.S. introduced in southern Colombia. The State Department hired DynCorp, a private military contractor, to fly crop dusters at high altitudes over the rainforests of southern Colombia, spraying a chemical cocktail that includes a stronger version of Monsanto's popular and controversial herbicide, Round-Up, over suspected coca fields. Beers was the public face of the fumigation program, defending and advocating for it in Congressional hearings and in the media. . . . Beers played a central role in creating the myth of the "narco-terrorist" which has been used to justify both the fumigations and continued U.S. military aid to Colombia. . . . The program has had no measurable impact on the availability, price, or purity of cocaine in the U.S., let alone the rate of cocaine addiction in this country. . . . Besides being cruel, Beers' attitude ignores the fact that farmers who don't grow coca have been hurt just as badly by the fumigations as farmers who do grow coca. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the chemical cocktail used in the fumigation program, is a broad-spectrum herbicide that kills any and all green plants. The crop fumigation planes fly at high altitudes, and so their spraying is at best imprecise. As a result, many farmers growing only legal crops have lost everything. . . . Beers went even further in defending the fumigation program when giving a sworn deposition in a lawsuit filed against DynCorp in a U.S. Federal District Court by indigenous tribes in Ecuador who claimed that their health and their crops had been damaged when herbicides sprayed in Colombia drifted over the border on the wind. Desperate to keep the suit from proceeding to trial, he argued that the fumigation program was vital to U.S. national security because it was an essential part of the war against terrorism in Colombia. He then went a step further, stating, under oath, that "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received training in Al Qaida terrorist caps in Afghanistan." . . . Beers' claim was, of course, absurd and unfounded. The idea that Islamic fundamentalists would align themselves with hardline Marxists halfway around the world doesn't meet the laugh test. . . . Beers later recanted his testimony, claiming that he had been misinformed. But his bizarre allegation reflects his fundamental belief that the war on terrorism and the war on drugs are inextricably linked, and that the coca farmers who are forced to make payments to the FARC are legitimate military targets, and their neighbors' legal crops are acceptable collateral damage. . . . If John Kerry lets Rand Beers continue to guide his foreign policy, a Kerry administration will be no better for rural Colombians than a Bush administration. Democrats who believe that Senator Kerry offers a humane alternative to Bush should think long and hard about what Rand Beers would set loose on the world if he were allowed to run the State Deparment.

posted by LoZo 1:05 PM