A Rumble in the Jungle Hits Home
by Clay Risen

There is a disturbing scene at the beginning of Terry Gilliam's dystopian Brazil. A SWAT team invades an apartment, destroying the ceiling and walls in the process, to arrest a man for a vague litany of crimes. His wife and kids watch in horror as he is bound, gagged and dragged out, never to be seen again. Only later do they find out something the viewer already knows — that the whole thing was a mistake; a fly landed into a warrant-issuing machine at just the wrong moment, changing the name and setting the wheels of justice in a disastrously errant direction.

Such absurdity is common in Gilliam's films, and watching them we feel lucky we don't live in such a cold and mechanistic society. And yet last week's downing of a missionary plane in Peru could have been drawn directly from just such a plot — A Peruvian air force jet, directed to the aircraft by a CIA spotter plane, mistook it for a drug runner and shot it down, killing an American missionary and her infant daughter in the process.

In the aftermath, we've learned that the Peruvians may not have followed the correct procedure; that the Americans — not government agents but contractors from the Aviation Development Corporation, based at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Ala. — made only token protests to the Peruvian pilot's hasty actions; and that CIA agents on the ground gave the Peruvian pilot the go-ahead.

The United States government has done its best to distance itself from the tragedy, claiming that the blame lies with the Peruvian air force. But in what should be understood as nothing other than the grossest neglect of its citizens' well-being, the government allowed contracted, civilian employees — men who fall outside of the rules of engagement and human-rights laws constraining the military — to determine that the Bowers' flight was at least a suspected drug flight, and gave them the power to recommend a Peruvian fighter jet come to investigate. The contractors may not have pulled the trigger or even given the order to fire, but they are clearly responsible for setting in motion a tragic series of events. And, by placing them in such a position, so too is the U.S. government.

But tragic as the death of a young mother and her child may be, it is only one moment in a much larger, much more tragic story. The Andes is crawling with CIA operatives, special forces troops and semi-secret military bases. The United States makes compliance with its objectives a requirement for military and economic aid, resources that countries like Colombia and Peru want to use to fight not drug dealers but Leftist rebels.

This kind of militarization, and its inevitable, disastrous results, isn't limited to Latin America, either. It takes place every day, all over the country — SWAT teams looking for drugs raid the wrong houses, police officers misuse the powers and resources available to them for fighting drugs for their illicit gains and private prisons lobby for tougher drug laws in the hope of increasing prison populations, and likewise corporate profits.

War is the ultimate act of dehumanization. In an effort to gain territory or resources or merely prestige, a country reduces its citizens to numbers, its soldiers to commodities, and then it coldly calculates how many it is willing to lose to attain victory. It used to be that the "War on Drugs" was a metaphor; now it's a reality. Veronica and Charity Bowers will be remembered as little more than unfortunate consequences of an overall plan, literally collateral damage. The real tragedy is that the war will go on, more innocent people will die, and our leaders will tell us to accept their loss as "casualties."

What would happen if, somehow, this all changed? If, suddenly, the people, not the "war," were at the center of our drug policy? Would we finally realize that drug abuse is not an issue of too little law enforcement, or too little military involvement, or overly weak drug laws, but rather one of simple supply and demand, of human desire? It is a great irony that the United States is the world's standard bearer of capitalism, and yet when it comes to drugs, we seem to think things operate differently. We fool ourselves into thinking that if we just spend more money in Colombia, if we just make drug laws a little tougher, drug abuse will start to decline. Meanwhile, we ignore the reality that these efforts don't work, and that the only thing that does work is treatment and prvention, two decidely un-militaristic programs. Solutions that address the lives behind the drug trade.

Nevertheless, despite being repeatedly proven wrong by the facts, our government continues to pursue a militaristic drug policy. One is tempted to ask "How many Charity Bowers will it take to make things change?" But then, do you really want the answer?

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.