Addicted to Failure

By Paul Armentano, NORML. Posted November 21, 2001.

For Jim and Veronica "Roni" Bowers, life aboard their 55-foot houseboat in Iquitos, Peru, was the culmination of lifelong dreams. The American college sweethearts-turned-missionaries had long aspired to raise a family in South America. That dream was now reality. The couple had two beautiful children, seven-year-old son Cory and infant daughter Charity, and a mission to disseminate food, medical supplies, and Christianity to the thousands of Peruvian natives living along the banks of the Amazon River. It was a laborious and dangerous life, but it was what they had always wanted.

On the morning of April 20, 2001, Jim, Roni, Cory, and Charity boarded a small, slow-moving Cessna 185 seaplane bound for Iquitos. The family was returning from Leticia, Colombia, where they had traveled one day earlier to secure Charity's visa. Piloting the 250-mile return flight was 42-year-old Kevin Donaldson, a fellow missionary with more than 15 years' experience navigating the skies of Peru. Thus far their trip had been uneventful. But it would end in tragedy.

Unbeknownst to Donaldson and his four passengers, a CIA-contracted surveillance plane with CIA agents aboard had spotted the missionaries' craft shortly after takeoff. After trying and failing to establish radio contact with the Cessna or confirm its flight path, the surveiling plane alerted Peruvian fighter pilots in Iquitos that it was likely trafficking cocaine. The Peruvian pilots were authorized to intercept the Cessna, and were granted permission to use deadly force.

Jim Bowers and Kevin Donaldson never suspected anything was wrong. As a Peruvian jet fighter came into view, the 37-year-old father held his son up to the window for a closer look. Seconds later, the jet opened fire.

The first round of gunfire smashed the windshield in front of Bowers's face. Other shots pierced the Cessna's cabin and tail. The plane erupted in flames. Kevin Donaldson screamed into the radio, "They're trying to kill us! They're trying to kill us!" as he desperately tried to ditch the flailing aircraft in the Amazon below. Bowers struggled to extinguish the fire. Just inches behind him lay his wife and infant daughter -- dead. Roni, 35, a woman described by those who knew her as having everything to live for, and Charity, whose life had just begun, had been struck and killed by a single bullet.

In the wake of the Bowers tragedy, politicians and pundits alike have stepped forward to assign blame. Bush administration officials initially singled out the Peruvian military, alleging that the attackers failed to follow proper procedure. Secretary of State Colin Powell went out of his way to charge Hollywood types and other well-to-do Americans who "continue to use drugs in an unlawful way" with the ultimate responsibility for Roni and Charity's deaths. Washington Times columnist Robert Charles, a former chief counsel to the National Security Subcommittee, argued that fault lay primarily with "the unrepentant drug lords who are the unambiguous first cause of the Peruvian shoot-down policy." Last but not least, the U.S. State Department resolved that no one was culpable because the seven-year-old drug-interdiction program had no defined rules to begin with.

Through all the finger-pointing, the true culprits -- America's incessant yet intrinsically flawed drug warriors -- remain at large. As president and commander in chief, it is George W. Bush who now presides over their multibillion-dollar crusade. Despite heavy casualties, waning public support, hundreds of thousands of American lives thrown away, and outright tragedies like the deaths of Roni and Charity Bowers, the president and his allies have no intention of calling a cease-fire. "It's a shame what happened," said Congressman Porter Goss (R-Florida), "but this is war, and unfortunately there are casualties."

"Acceptance of drug use is simply not an option.... I believe the only humane and compassionate response to drug use is a moral refusal to accept it.... Illegal drugs are the enemies of innocence and ambition and hope." Such tough talk, uttered by Bush at a May 10 Rose Garden press conference announcing his intent to relaunch America's drug war, marked an about-face for the president, who, defining substance abuse as a "disease" rather than a crime, had previously questioned the wisdom of mandatory-minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders. Yet his sudden change of heart -- he opened his speech by promising, "As of today, the federal government is waging an all-out effort to reduce illegal drug use in America" -- was hardly unexpected.

The preceding day, Bush had nominated drug war hardliner Asa Hutchinson to head the nation's $1.5 billion Drug Enforcement Administration. As a congressman, the three-term Arkansas Republican and moral crusader -- he was one of the chief prosecutors during Clinton's impeachment -- made his mark by demanding stiffer penalties for drug offenders, coerced abstinence for addicts, and increased use of the military for drug-interdiction efforts overseas. During Clinton's reign, under which annual drug arrests soared to an all-time high, Hutchinson lambasted the administration for being soft on drugs. He called Clinton's drug-reduction strategy "the language of pessimism," and insisted that "elimination -- not containment -- should be our goal." Not one to let democracy interfere with that goal, he backed legislation in 1999 that forbade the District of Columbia from implementing a ballot initiative legalizing the use of medicinal marijuana, even though it had been approved by 70 percent of the District's electorate. That same year, fearful of voter contagion, Hutchinson urged Congress to rewrite federal law to prevent citizens from approving similar ballot proposals in the 50 states.

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