Source: The Indianapolis Star

When the war on drugs comes home

STEPHEN CHAPMAN

Esequiel Hernandez Jr. never knew there was a war going on.
A polite 18yearold Texas high school student who had never
been in trouble, he was minding his own business on the afternoon
of May 20, tending a herd of goats in a desolate areas near
the Mexican border. Then he came across four U.S. Marines
who were prepped for combat.

The Marines survived the encounter. Hernandez died of a single shot
to the chest from an M16.

The Marines were in Texas as apart of a drug interdiction effort
when they saw the youngster firing his .22 rifle in their direction.
A local sheriff would have known Hernandez was probably shooting
at a wild dog, a snake or a tin can, a commonplace event in rural
Texas. If Hernandez saw the Marines, he couldn't have guessed who
they were, since they were camouflaged to look like foliage and
had not made their presence known to the local population.

Instead of trying to communicate with Hernandez to avoid bloodshed,
they treated him as they would have treated an Iraqi commando in
the Gulf War. They followed him and shot him. Then, as he bled
to death, they waited for the Border Patrol to arrive, making
no attempt to save his life.

The killing may not have been their fault. In a war zone, a soldier
who confronts someone who looks like an armed enemy can't afford
to take chances. That helps explain why a grand jury refused
to indict the Marine who fired the fatal shot.

A spokesman for the Texas Rangers explained, "These are the kinds
of problems you're going to run into when the military takes
the role of law enforcement. The military is trained to shoot
to kill, not to shoot and then run up and give first aid." After
all, Marines are not police, who are trained to respect the rights
of the guilty as well as the innocent and to use their weapons
only when absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, the Marines were serving as police helping
to enforce domestic drug laws against civilian Americans on
U.S. soil. In recent years, the American military has taken
on one of the biggest roles in the endless, futile effort
to eradicate drugs at home. Although soldiers don't make arrests,
they provide crucial help to agencies that do. In fact, according
to Texas Monthly magazine, the military's budget for antidrug
efforts exceeds that of the Customs Service, the Border Patrol,
the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Until 1981, federal law absolutely forbade the use of soldiers
in police work. But Ronald Reagan and George Bush, arguing that
cocaine and marijuana were just as much a threat to national
security as the Red Army, got the law changed and proceeded
to militarize drug enforcement.

The death of Hernandez was not some fluke but the inevitable result
of putting armed military personnel to work in a civilian population.
That's why the Pentagon, which was not crazy about the original
expansion of its responsibilities, now wants its soldiers guaranteed
immunity from lawsuits or prosecution when someone gets hurt
in these situations.

But drug enforcement has become a crusade demanding the suspension
of conventional rules. Troops on the border are only one example
of how antidrug hysteria has eroded respect for longstanding liberties.

Public school students and federal employees who have done nothing
wrong can now be forced to submit to drug tests. Innocent people
have lost land and homes because of someone else's violation
of drug laws.

White House drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey opposes the use of the
military in drug enforcement and dismisses the idea that troops along
the Rio Grande can make any noticeable difference in the flow of drugs
from abroad. But that hasn't dampened the zeal of politicians. In
June, after the Hernandez killing, the House of Representatives voted
to station 10,000 troops along the Mexican border to combat drug traffic.

A government that is fighting a war can't afford to get bogged down
fretting about civil liberties. You may have thought the "war on drugs"
was just a figure of speech. Not for Esequiel Hernandez, it wasn't.


Creators Syndicate