Pubdate: Sun, 01 Jul 2001
Source: Liberty Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2000 Liberty Foundation
Address: Box 1118, Port Townsend, WA 98368
Contact:  http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/index.html
Author: Ralph R. Reitand

BUSH'S WAR ON DRUGS: JUST JAIL 'EM AND SHOOT 'EM

Twelve years ago, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman wrote an "Open Letter
to Bill Bennett" warning about the policies that Bennett and former
President George H.W. Bush were advocating to fight drugs: "The path you
propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign
countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of
repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war
cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and
individual freedom that you and I cherish."

Last month, American missionary Veronica Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old
newly adopted daughter, Charity, found themselves at ground zero in
America's War on Drugs when a fighter jet shot their private Cessna
seaplane out of the sky over the jungle canopy of Peru. Veronica had
been in South America for nearly a decade, raising her children on a
houseboat and delivering food, medicine, and Bible stories to villagers
along the Amazon.

Five people were in the Cessna that morning- the pilot, Veronica,
Charity, Veronica's husband Jim, and their 7-year-old adopted son, Cory.
TIME.com provided the details:

"Jim Bowers was feeding Charity Cheerios when the Peruvian jet dived
toward them. He handed the baby to Veronica. Seconds later, bullets
ripped through the cabin -- one entering Veronica's back and going into
Charity's skull. Both died instantly. The plane was thrown into a steep
spiral, and flames erupted all around them. Seriously wounded in both
legs, pilot Kevin Donaldson somehow managed to land the plane. In the
chaos, Bowers pulled the bodies of his wife and daughter from the
burning wreckage. Bowers and his son perched atop the capsized plane's
pontoons until natives arrived in a canoe half an hour later."

The downing of the U.S. missionary plane occurred as both President
George W. Bush and Peruvian Prime minister Perez de Cuellar were
attending the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Bush explained the
American role in the shoot-down: "Our role was simply to pass on
information." Translation: our role was to have a U.S. surveillance
plane track the missionary plane before it was shot down, mistake it for
a drug-smuggling flight, and "pass on information" to the Peruvian air
force -- information like the plane's location and tail numbers.

"Our government," said Bush, "is involved with helping our friends in
South America identify airplanes that might be carrying illegal drugs."
Might be. White House spokesman Ari Fleiser said the U.S. crew of the
CIA-operated surveillance aircraft tracking the missionary plane "did
its best to make certain that all the rules were followed."

Closer to home, Pedro Oregon Navarro is also no longer among the living.
It was 1:40 a.m. when six members of Houston's anti-gang task force
barged into Navarro's home and shot him to death. They thought they were
raiding the home of a drug dealer but they were mistaken.

Timothy Lynch at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies
tells the story:

"It all began when two police officers pulled over a car occupied by
three young' men. One of the occupants was placed under arrest for
public intoxication. Now in serious trouble because he was already on
probation for a previous drug offense, the street-wise arrestee thought
fast. He told the officers that he would give them the name and address
of a drug dealer if they would just let him go. The cops agreed. The
drunk told them a bunch of lies and gave them Navarro's address. Making
no attempt to corroborate the information, the two police officers
called for a backup of four more cops and set out for Navarro's address.
"When Navarro's brother-in-law opened the door, the police rushed in,"
reports Lynch. "Navarro, who'd been asleep for several hours, heard the
ruckus and grabbed a handgun he kept in his bedroom. It was all over in
just a few moments. The police kicked in his bedroom door and bullets
started flying. Oregon was shot twelve times. His own gun was never
fired."

And so, after decades of studies showing that treatment is far more
effective in reducing drug use than are midnight raids, jails,
informants, wiretapping, racial profiling, property confiscation, border
interdiction, and the shooting down of planes over Peru, here we go
again, one more time, with George W. Bush's nomination of John Walters
as our next drug czar -- a shoot-'em-down and lock-'em-up guy who says
it's an "all-too-common myth" that we have too many small-time drug
users in prison. Walters is a guy who's declared that treatment for drug
addiction is just "the latest
manifestation of the liberals' commitment to a therapeutic state."

As it has turned out, Friedman's words were prophetic: "Every friend of
freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the
prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision
of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers
empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A
country in which shooting down unidentified planes 'on suspicion' can be
seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United
States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations."

Ralph R. Reitand
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