Plane Shot Down: ‘Official Murder’

* Whatever final determination ensues from the tragic attack in Peru upon the plane carrying American missionaries, it essentially amounts to one more ill-conceived undertaking in the so-called war on drugs. We should have learned by now that focus upon the entrepreneurs of drugs is futile and it is the consumers who should attract our concern.

A much more viable solution would be a nationwide program that sponsors a thoroughly comprehensive film on the ill effects of drug abuse--for the individual’s health and long-term quality of life, for an addict’s friends, family and employers and for society as a whole. This film should be a raw, take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred depiction, complete with real-life case histories. Viewing this should be mandatory at all grade levels. After viewing such a documentary, what young person could then go out to the schoolyard and be persuaded that drug use was “cool”?

SUNNY KREIS

Santa Monica

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* Would we feel better if the plane were occupied by five drug smugglers instead of missionaries? The facts are that the U.S. is part of a heinous practice of interdiction carried out by the Peruvian military simultaneously acting as cop, judge and executioner. The war on drugs continues to destroy innocent lives, devastate our inner cities, fill our prisons with nonviolent offenders and destroy our individual liberties.

BOB CONSTANTINE

Placentia

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* Who is responsible for the death of the mother and child in Peru? The people behind the failing U.S. government drug policy.

JAKE PRINS

Loma Linda

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* The media coverage of the shooting down of the missionaries’ plane over Peru utterly fails to question the morality of shooting down any unarmed plane, whether or not it happens to carry drugs. Whether or not passengers on the plane are “innocent,” shooting down an unarmed plane is state-sanctioned murder, plain and simple.

MICHAEL A. JAMES

Los Angeles

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* Quote from “Accidental Downing Was ‘Worst Fear,’ ” April 24: “But the Bush administration defended U.S. aid to the Peruvian air force in shooting down suspected airborne drug runners as crucial to the international war on narcotics, and [State Department spokesman Richard] Boucher made it clear that the administration hopes to resume intercepting suspected narcotics flights as soon as possible.”

After an 11-year suspension of “interdiction” (like “collateral damage,” official double talk for shooting down suspected planes and their occupants), it was resumed in 1994. This is legal law enforcement and foreign policy? It took this act of official murder to open our eyes to the morality of the undeclared wars of our foreign policy, including the drug war.

NICHOLAS V. SEIDITA

Northridge

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* The armed forces of a Latin American country killing innocent civilians with CIA coaching. What else is new?

GREGORY LERNER

Encino