Copyright Chicago Tribune

IT'S TIME TO RETHINK THE BATTLE PLANS
WHEN THE WAR ON DRUGS COMES HOME

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 area 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 part 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 policehelping
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 responsiblities, now
wants its soldiers guaranteed immunity from lawsuits or prosecution
when someone gets hurt in these situations. "I'm basically talking
about their liability to civil or criminal legal action for
performing their jobs under the rules of engagement and the
procedures that have been assigned to them by the military," said
Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon. Even police lack such
broad protection. 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. Air travelers have found themselves
detained and questioned without probable cause because they fit an
arbitrary profile. Lowlevel drug offenders have been given mandatory
5 and 10year federal sentences without parole. 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.