A LITERAL WAR ON DRUGS

By Kevin Zeese

The Pentagon's recent recommendation to permanently cancel armed military
patrols along the Mexico border is a good first step toward a drug policy
not based on military force. Armed soldiers on the border, however, are
only the tip of the iceberg in our militarized drug war.

The incident that led to the proposed policy shift -- the shooting death of
young goat herder last year by a United States Marine on an anti-drug
surveillance mission -- should never have happened.

When I visited the Texas border town where Esequiel Hernandez was killed,
residents said they could not understand why they were treated like
criminals simply because they lived on the border. Military helicopters
droned overhead. Children were afraid to go outside.

Many in the community felt the military had taken from them one of their
best and brightest. Yet, the Department of Defense has yet to acknowledge
any wrongdoing. Instead, it hides behind last year's questionable grand
jury decision not to indict the marine who fired the fatal bullet. It fails
to mention that the majority of the jury were people who received paychecks
or retirement checks from the federal government, including the deputy
border patrol chief for the region, as well as a member of the very agency
that called in the Marines and was responsible for their supervision.

The Hernandez family has suffered from the loss of their son. They deserve
a formal apology from the Pentagon.

For most of our nation's history, police actions by the military have been
barred from U.S. soil. This was consistent with the sentiments of our
Founding Fathers, who objected to the presence of British standing armies
in the colonies. In 1878, Congress passed a law that made it a criminal
offense for the military to be involved in civilian law enforcement.

But in 1981, that tradition began to change. Over the protest of
then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the government put in place
the first of several amendments allowing the military to become involved in
civilian law enforcement. Weinberger's concerns -- that blurring the
distinction between civilian policing and military action would risk our
democratic principles, and that soldiers lack the training to deal with
civilian situations -- fell on deaf ears.

Since then, the military role in drug enforcement has escalated rapidly:

The Pentagon's drug enforcement budget approaches $1 billion a year;

4,000 National Guard troops are involved in 1,300 counter-drug operations;

89 percent of police departments now have paramilitary units, 46 percent of
which have been trained by active-duty armed forces;

Army Special Forces units have conducted urban warfare drills in at least
21 cities throughout the United States;

The military under federal law is the "lead agency" on drug interdiction;

The U.S. military provides weapons and training to foreign military and
police units, many of which have been involved in human-rights violations.

Despite this, White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey announced last year
that he was backing away from the "war on drugs" metaphor, opting instead
to view the problem as a "continuous challenge" without clear victors. Yet,
the reality is that today's drug war has turned more and more into a real
war.

We have two choices. We can continue down the path of the last decade and a
half and involve the military, National Guard and paramilitary police
forces in civilian law enforcement. More communities will feel like that
border town in Texas where constant surveillance and the presence of troops
have become facts of life.

Or, we can begin taking steps to remove the military from civilian policing
altogether. We can begin to reframe our national drug problem as a public
health crisis that must be addressed with public health solutions, not
military force.

ZEESE is president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, a clearinghouse for
drug-policy alternatives.