during the Vietnam War.
http://www.christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/1,1183,PTID2228|CHID100546|CIID374348,00.htmlNo One Gets Away Clean
By Roberto
Rivera, April 23, 2001
In Peru, another casualty of the war
on drugsBreakPoint Online
-
This past Friday, Veronica Bowers, 35, and her seven-month-old
daughter,
Charity, were killed when a Peruvian Air Force plane fired on the
Cessna
185 they were flying into Peru's Amazonian interior. Her husband
James and
her son Cory survived the crash landing, and were rescued from the
river by
Peruvian campesinos. The incident has drawn national attention
because the
Bowers were American citizens killed by a foreign military, and
because
they were missionaries. This kind of death always seems senseless.
It's
even harder to understand when it happens to a family that dedicated
itself
to serving God in places like Amazonia.
What happened? An
American surveillance plane mistakenly believed that the
Bowers's plane
might be carrying drugs. They relayed this information to
the Peruvian Air
Force, which then shot the plane down. There's some
controversy as to
whether or not the Air Force ordered the plane to land
before it shooting it
down. But there's no controversy about the fact that
Peru regularly-at least
thirty times since 1995-shoots down civilian planes
suspected of carrying
drugs. And they do this with the United States's
knowledge and, arguably,
with its blessing. It's not for nothing that Peru
has been hailed as a model
for its cooperation in the war against drugs.
As the tagline for last
year's best film, Traffic, tells us, in the war
against drugs, "no one gets
away clean." What happened Friday wasn't an
exception. We Americans can, as
President Bush did, call what happened to
"Roni" Bowers a "tragic mistake,"
and take some comfort in the knowledge
that the military action that killed
her "was not an operation we had
control of." But none of this changes the
fact that Bowers was a victim of
the war against drugs-that she died as a
result of our anxiety about the
impact of drugs on our society, and the
means we have chosen to address
those concerns.
When he was editor of
the New Republic, Michael Kinsley formulated what he
called "TRB's Law of
Political Scandal," which said that, in cases of
alleged illegality and
impropriety, the real outrage lies in what is
perfectly legal and proper. A
corollary of Kinsley's law was at work in
Peru. According to the Washington
Post, American officials have long had
misgivings about the Peruvian
government's willingness to shoot down
civilian aircraft as part of its
interdiction efforts. These concerns led
the United States to suspend active
cooperation with Peru for a while. Then
in 1994, as part of one of our
regularly scheduled frenzies over drugs, we
resumed cooperation, adopting
rules of engagement to allay our concerns.
But a check-off list isn't the
same as moral certainty. That's why the Post
wrote that the United States
had, in effect, a "don't ask, don't tell"
policy regarding what Peru did
with the information we gave them. Doubtless
this willingness to look the
other way was made easier by the fact that
those who would die would be
what, in another time and imperium, would have
been called "wogs." The
problem is, Bowers wasn't a wog; she was one of us,
and now we're forced to
look at what's being done in our name.
And not just in our name, but also
because of our hypocrisy. It is only
American arrogance, reinforced by
repeatedly telling ourselves that we are
the "sole remaining superpower,"
that allows us to presume to give the rest
of the world a grade for its
cooperation in the war on drugs while
neglecting to grade our own efforts to
reduce demand at home. Every year,
such nations as Colombia and Mexico must
endure the humiliation of being
certified as "cooperating" in the gringo war
on drugs. In the meanwhile,
Colombia is on the verge of falling apart thanks
to a civil war financed in
large measure by El Norte's appetite for drugs.
And in Mexico, judges,
prosecutors, and police are dying in the fight
against cartels whose
markets are not the D.F. or Monterrey, but Los Angeles
and Kansas City.
Our drug laws have become more draconian, but this,
paradoxically, proves
my point. Americans convicted of drug offenses are
serving longer
sentences. But these offenses involve the sale and
distribution of drugs,
not their consumption. There's very little political
support for increasing
criminal penalties for possession. Why? Partly
because of civil liberties,
and partly because the prospect of giving
millions of middle-class
Americans a rap sheet is not something our leaders
relish. So, we live in a
cloud-cuckoo land where using the stuff carries
little sanction but getting
it into the hands of those users is a crime
punishable by death-both
judicially and extra-judicially.
It was the
unwillingness to assign moral culpability for our drug problems
that, just
as much as the Peruvian Air Force, killed Roni Bower and her
daughter. We
haven't got the stomach-or the imagination-to really attack
demand, so, like
someone desperate to change the subject, we go on and on
about the supply
side-secure in the belief that the casualties of our
policy are folks
ordinary Americans can't relate to.
Tragically, Roni and Charity Bowers
were there when our luck ran out. I
suspect that our cooperation with Peru
will be put on hold. I also suspect
that, within a few months or a year,
we'll announce new and improved rules
of engagement that will allow us to
actively assist the Peruvian military
in its efforts to protect us from our
own appetites, and spare us the need
to just say no.
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© 2001 Prison Fellowship
Ministries. All Rights Reserved.