by Alexander Cockburn

About the author: Alexander Cockburn authors a column called “Beat the Devil” for the Nation, a biweekly journal of opinion.

Anyone wanting a vivid snapshot of the rubble of US policy toward Latin America should glance at Colombia, where the Clinton Administration now has one foot over the brink of a military intervention strongly reminiscent of John Kennedy’s initial deployments in Vietnam.

Colombia is in economic free fall, and, as Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs remarks, the only comfort its beleaguered inhabitants can seize upon is that the velocity of this collapse is at least slower than that of neighboring Ecuador, now experiencing its worst economic slump in seventy years. Colombia is currently suffering negative growth, has an...