Starting in late October, Brazil intends to shoot down planes flying within its airspace that it suspects of drug trafficking. The story began to receive publicity about a week ago, and today’s New York Times has an article. Brazil’s decision stirs memories of the tragic killing of a US missionary and her child under a similar policy in Peru in 2001.
The Times article includes a couple of quotes from “Gen. Mauro Jos? Miranda Gandra, a former chief of the air force who is now director of the Air Institute at Est?cio de S? University in Rio de Janeiro.” Gen. Gandra is concerned, it seems, that the shootdown policy will not be applied to any planes with children in them:”‘This really left me perplexed, because it practically undermines the very purpose of the decree,’ General Gandra said. ‘What you’re doing is creating a safe-conduct pass for drug-smuggling aircraft carrying kids and creating the possibility that children will be kidnapped and used as human shields.'”
Yes, drugs are so evil that you have to be willing to shoot down planes with children in them to combat drug trafficking. Anything short of that is a dangerous half-measure.
I am reminded of Vice Squad hero Clarence Darrow, the renowned criminal defense lawyer and staunch opponent of alcohol Prohibition. Commenting upon the policy of “denaturing” industrial alcohol in order to make it unpalatable or worse for people who drank it — while knowing that many people were going to drink it — Darrow had this to say:
“So far as I know, no organization of human beings heretofore has coldly and deliberately advocated poisoning any one who might run counter to their will. The prohibitionists insist that alcohol sold for mechanical purposes and shipped broadcast over all America shall contain deadly poison. They advocate this, knowing that much of it is redistilled and used as a beverage, that many people might and do get it through accident and without any design to take intoxicants; and that, at best, or worst, to drink it is only a minor offense; yet men and women, who in ordinary life are kind and humane, are so obsessed by their delusions and so sure of their convictions, and so resentful of those who do not follow their dictates, that they are willing to condemn to blindness and death thousands of people, without arrest or indictment or trial, by putting poison into their drink. Heretofore such measures have not been resorted to against anything but rats and vermin, and many humane persons hesitate to do this.”
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