The War on drugs: Two more casualties - Vortices - missionaries shot down in Peru

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter, 2001 by Stephen P. Lt Col Howard

LT COL STEPHEN P HOWARD (*)

The art of war is divided between art and strategem. What cannot be done by force must be done by stratagem.

Frederick the Great

WE MUST ADD two more names to the casualty list of America's so-called war on drugs. On 20 April 2001, a Peruvian military aircraft shot down a civilian Cessna 185, killing American Christian missionary Roni Bowers and her seven-month-old daughter Charity:

A CIA-contracted American crew aboard a US drug interdiction aircraft tried to stop Peruvian authorities from shooting at a plane that turned out to be carrying American missionaries....

Three Americans contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and a Peruvian air force officer, were aboard the Cessna Citation 2, about one mile (1.6 kin) from where the missionaries' plane was flying, the official said....

The two-engine US Department of Defense aircraft was providing tracking and detection information as part of joint US-Peruvian efforts to stem drug trafficking. (1)

Incidents like this give us the opportunity to reflect upon the broader implications of policies that have gone awry.

The facts and miscalculations of this incident will probably never receive frill disclosure. News reporters, commentators, and others will "spin" the episode into a "terrible tragedy," "careless accident," or "unfortunate incident." We will have difficulty uncovering the truth because too many special interests have a hand in this war on drugs. Each of these groups tries to push its own agenda instead of promoting what is best for solving America's illegal-drug dilemma.

Political transitions such as the one currently under way in Washington, D.C., provide the opportunity to look at previous policies from a new perspective. On the one hand, the course of action followed by the United States for over a decade to counter the "supply side" has not yielded the results hoped for by the American people. Supply-side advocates say that the US surveillance flights (like the one that tipped off the Peruvian air force, which ultimately shot down the Bowers' plane) play a vital role in stopping the spread of illegal drugs in America. What they will fail to say is that such interdiction efforts have failed miserably for over 10 years.

On the other hand, "demand side" advocates point to this incident as another example of overzealous law enforcement and of military officials trampling the rights of average citizens. They suggest that full funding of treatment programs for addictive behavior would do more good than shooting down civilian aircraft.

Neither view is completely correct. The most important point at stake in this issue is that the US military is the wrong tool for stopping the use of illegal drugs in America. We should not involve military force in domestic law-enforcement issues either inside or outside the borders of the United States. Rather, we should train, equip, and prepare our military forces to fight the nation's "real" wars. Because of ignorance and self-serving agendas, many people have lost sight of the intended use of the US military.

Uninformed individuals support counterdrug interdiction operations by the military (such as the Peruvian aircraft shootdown) because they have little understanding of what military force can or should do. To them, the military is an expensive burden that should find gainful employment. Counterdrug interdiction operations sound like just the right sort of employment for the military. Although such operations squander America's military capability, some advocates are willing to misuse our national-defense assets in return for drug-seizure headlines and costly, yet ineffective, surveillance and interdiction operations.

Furthermore, some special interests prosper financially or philosophically by using America's military personnel to fight a war that doesn't exist. The Nixon administration transformed America's perspective on illegal drugs from "concern" to "war" in 1971, when the president first proclaimed a war on drugs. Like the war on poverty, it was a catchy phrase. In their haste to do something, well-intentioned government leaders could say, "We're taking action." Sadly, a great deal of misguided "action" has also taken place while presidential administrations have tried to figure Out how to deal with the problem of illegal drugs in the United States.

But this problem is so complex and profitable that it defies dissection and analysis. Each administration since 1971 has looked for a quick fix to stem the tide of illegal drugs flowing over our borders. For national-defense crises, the nation's "911" capability lies within the Department of Defense. Because drug trafficking had become a transnational problem, it seemed logical to pass the responsibility for battling illegal drugs to the military.

Until 1990, US generals and admirals had opposed such a tasking. They knew of the huge physical and philosophical differences that existed between law enforcement and military operations. However, after America won the Cold Wax; those same generals and admirals feared losing their market share in the New World Order. Without the Soviet Union to fight (or at least to prepare to fight), senior military leaders sought missions that would maintain their relevancy in the minds of the American people. The "peace dividend" represented an alarming concept to the military-industrial apparatus (both civilian and military) that had staked its future on the Cold War. When that war ended, it sought any mission that would maintain the US military's Cold War infrastructure. Whether the military was the correct tool or not, senior military leaders reversed themselves and embraced an active military role in counterdrug interdiction operations. But at what cost?