DRUG WAR CASUALTIES

America's war on drugs claimed two more innocent victims over the
weekend: Baptist missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter,
Charity. They were killed when a Peruvian air force jet opened fire on
a single-engine plane flying over the Amazon basin in northeastern
Peru.

Peruvian authorities and the American pilot of the missionaries'
plane, who was injured when the plane crash-landed, had different
accounts of how and why this tragedy occurred. The American pilot says
he had filed a flight plan and had radioed a nearby airport that he
was approaching for a landing. The Peruvians dispute this. In any
event, the air force pilot assumed the missionaries' plane was
involved in drug trafficking.

Americans aboard a third aircraft, a CIA surveillance plane,
reportedly warned the Peruvian air force not to shoot until they had a
positive ID on the plane. The Peruvian pilot went ahead and shot the
plane down anyway.

So what's the U.S. responsibility in all this? It's considerable,
despite the warning from the Americans on the surveillance plane.
After all, the Peruvian air force is involved in drug interdiction at
the urging of Washington. And the crew of the surveillance plane had
earlier suggested that the missionaries' plane might be carrying drugs.

This CIA-Peruvian operation will now be reviewed and debated in
Washington. Shooting down missionaries is bad PR. Luckily, it's also
rare.

But our anti-drug operations in Peru and especially in Colombia are
hurting people on the ground in those countries every day. The use of
air-dropped defoliants on coca crops in Colombia probably has little
impact on the volume of cocaine that eventually reaches the U.S. But
it affects the livlihood and perhaps the health of peasants who grow
the stuff and have no other way to make a living.

We're making enemies, big time -- without winning the drug war.