CRASHING IN PERU

Two Innocents Die For A Cause Lost Long Ago

U.S. officials must thoroughly investigate conflicting reports of how a
CIA-assisted drug interdiction effort resulted in the death of a young
missionary and her baby girl. No details can be withheld.

As information about the tragedy is revealed and scrutinized, one thing
about this tragedy is certain: The woman and her child did not die as
unintended casualties of a necessary drug war aimed at saving the United
States from itself. They died entirely in vain. The drug war isn't
necessary. It's futile.

Even if the downed plane had been carrying cocaine and heroin instead of
two missionaries and their children, shooting it down wouldn't have made
one speck of difference in reducing the flow of narcotics into the United
States.

Nor would it have made two specks' difference if an entire fleet of planes
packed tightly with illegal drugs from cockpits to tails had been shot down
from the sky. Narcotics would continue to pour into our nation every day.
The only effect on supply might be a temporary price spike, and maybe not
even that.

Cocaine trafficking into the United States comes primarily through Colombia
and surrounding countries. But drug trafficking is not limited to those
countries. Narcotics arrive in United States through the Golden Triangle of
Southeast Asia, through Mexico, the Middle East, Russia and Africa. Drugs
arrive by air, sea, cargo and, in one famous discovery, through a tunnel
from Mexico to Arizona.

Drug money flows through "offshore" accounts and through legitimate businesses.

Drug money finances wars, the illegal weapons trade, and high-rise office
buildings in the landscape of American cities.

Drug money buys boats, cops, gated country-club homes, customs officials,
accountants and designer clothes. Like power, drug money not only corrupts,
but corrupts absolutely.

This drug war is already lost on the interdiction and supply side of the
battle. But if a political message is to be found in the deaths of the
young missionary and her child, it is that Americans can't go on believing
that because drugs are bad, the drug war, as it's being fought, is good.

The U.S. presence in Colombia is not viewed within that nation as drug
interdiction, but as Americans taking sides in a bloody civil conflict, or
taking sides with one drug cartel over another. Our nation's credibility in
Colombia is lost; possibly damaged without repair.

As for Peru and its interdiction program, an assistant attorney general
angered Congress in 1994 when he warned in a memorandum that U.S. officials
were treading on unethical ground:

"There is a substantial risk that (U.S. government) personnel who furnish
assistance to the aerial interdiction programs of those countries could be
aiding and abetting criminal violations."

Walter Dellinger today has the misfortune of finding himself being proved
largely right.

The drug war can only be won on the home front. Shutting off all
trafficking from Colombia and through Peru -- even if that were possible --
wouldn't eliminate drug use in our nation.

As evidence, the use of cocaine is on the decline, but alcohol bingeing,
methamphetamine use, Ecstasy and "designer drugs" are on the opposite track
among youth. Those drugs are domestic products.

Simply put, North Americans have an appetite for self-destruction. Until
the whys are figured out, the drug war won't and can't be won no matter how
many planes are shot out of the sky.