COLUMN RIGHT / WILLIAM S. SMITH : A Question of Morality Over Legality : Diplomatic whining doesn’t wash in the torture-murder case of U.S. drug agent Camarena.

After years of investigation, delay and even a challenge in the Supreme Court, the trial of a Mexican doctor accused of assisting in the 1985 torture-murder of a U.S. drug-enforcement agent is about to begin in Los Angeles.

Controversy swirls around this trial not because of the brutal nature of the crime, but because of the way the defendant was brought to justice: Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain was forcibly abducted from his home in Guadalajara and brought to Texas by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The international reaction to this “violation of Mexico’s sovereignty” was predictably critical.

But to Americans whose moral and political imaginations are not polluted by the banalities of international rhetoric, the abduction was in the service of justice. Alvarez Machain is accused of assisting the torturers of a kidnaped DEA agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, by keeping him alive and awake, ensuring that his pain would be particularly acute and his death particularly agonizing. When the Mexican government dragged its feet on the case, some persistent and ingenious DEA agents arranged for the doctor’s deliverance into the U.S. justice system.

The proponents of fastidious international conduct, of course, argue that defending Alvarez Machain is not the issue--that the issues are “sovereignty” and “the rule of international law” and “the ability of sovereign nations to try their own citizens.” But the international community will barely lift a finger to prevent the wholesale flaunting of international law and sovereign borders by drug traffickers. And while the international community argues for indigenous prosecution of these criminals, Pablo Escobar slips from his palatial private Colombian jail into freedom. If the United States does not pursue foreigners responsible for crimes against Americans, how many countries will have the will or the means to do so?

Mexico has been the most vocal critic of the U.S. government’s actions. Well, now. Mexico is standing up for the principle of sovereign borders while its citizens stream across the Rio Grande carrying drugs and taking American jobs. Mexico argues that sovereign nations should try their own citizens, when the Mexican judicial system is saturated with corruption and Mexican prisons are run by drug gangs.

We all recognize that great nations must put up with foreign blustering sometimes in order to maintain good relations and, in this case, a degree of anti-drug cooperation. But how much hypocrisy can one superpower swallow? Maybe this torture and murder is the place to draw the line.

The reaction of senior U.S. officials to this international criticism was obsequious beyond what diplomacy required. Then-Secretary of State James A. Baker, while trying to defend the principle of sovereignty, also reassured international criminals that the United States would rarely, if ever, use the Supreme Court’s go-ahead to threaten their freedom. Atty. Gen. William Barr initially seemed to applaud the ruling, which upheld the abduction of Alvarez Machain, but was reined in and later suggested “snatch” authority would be used “only in the most compelling circumstances.” President Bush phoned Mexican President Salinas to assure him that this would never happen again.

Shouldn’t someone at a very high level in the U.S. government have expressed profound satisfaction that the wheels of justice would finally turn on an abominable crime committed against a brave U.S. agent? Shouldn’t someone in Washington point to this trial as a warning to international criminals? (“Lay a finger on an American citizen, and you may find yourself on a night flight to Leavenworth.”) Isn’t it more important to protect those who carry a U.S. passport or wear a U.S. badge than to defend the dreamlike principles of the “new world order”?

Of course, the United States should not, as a matter of policy, snatch all criminals living abroad who are wanted in a courtroom here. These are decisions that must be weighed by executive branch officials, balancing the potential damage to relations against the potential value of the targeted defendant. But to virtually rule out in principle such abductions because of foreign politicians’ whining--this is simply a national disservice.

Only the friends and colleagues of Special Agent Camarena come out looking good. They broke china. They ignored the niceties of diplomatic hypocrisy for the justice of an old-fashioned courtroom.

As we watch the siege of Sarajevo, it is apparent that utopian dreams for a “new world order” will come and go, while punishing heinous crimes against one’s countrymen will be forever admirable.