The U.S. government is upset over Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s efforts to win the war on drugs. U.S. officials are criticizing Duterte for killing suspected drug-law violators without providing them due process of law. Ever since he was elected president of the country, Duterte has unleashed a state-sponsored reign of terror that includes extra-judicial executions of people suspected of violating the government’s drug laws.
It would be difficult to find a better example of hypocrisy than that. After all, what Duterte is doing to win the war on drugs is no different from what the U.S. government is doing to win its war on terrorism.
Due process of law is a term that originated with Magna Carta in the year 1215. Through the centuries, the doctrine developed and evolved in the law as one of the principal bulwarks against the tyranny of the British government against its own citizens. The American people ultimately demanded that due process of law be incorporated into the Bill of Rights to serve as a protection against the potential tyranny of the federal government.
In the absence of due-process protection, the government wields the legal authority to arrest anyone it wants for any reason and do bad things to him, including incarcerating him indefinitely, torturing him, and even killing him. That’s the power that Duterte is exercising to win the war on drugs. It’s also the power that President Obama (and before him President Bush) is exercising to win the war on terrorism.
At a minimum, due process of law requires the government to follow certain legal procedures before it can do bad things to people. There are two primary components of due process: notice and hearing. The notice requirement requires the government to give formal notice to a person of the particular crime what which he is being charged. The hearing requirement requires the government to provide the person with a trial, where he has the right to defend himself against the charges. In the Bill of Rights, our American ancestors also ensured that people accused of crimes have the right not just to a trial before a judge but a trial where a jury composed of ordinary citizen decides the issue of guilt.
If the government is unable to provide formal notice of criminal charges or unable to prove the person’s guilt at trial (beyond a reasonable doubt here in the United States), the person walks out of the courtroom a free person. In such a case, the government is prohibited from doing anything bad to him.
That’s where Duterte is going wrong, and U.S. officials are right to call him out on it. He’s killing people without first notifying them of any criminal charges and without according them a trial. That’s the very essence of tyranny.
Yet, in waging his war on drugs Duterte is simply following the model established by U.S. officials in their war on terrorism. Ever since 9/11, U.S. officials have claimed the same legal authority in their war on terrorism that Duterte claims to have in his war on drugs. For the past 15 years, U.S. officials have adopted and implemented a formal assassination program that kills people based on a decision made by a team of national-security state bureaucrats. No formal notice of charges. No opportunity to be heard. No trial by jury. No due process of law. Just extra-judicial killings, just like Duterte’s.
So far, Duterte has not extended his assassination program to foreign countries. If he decides to do so, one can easily imagine Filipino military and intelligence agents going into foreign countries and assassinating suspected drug lords and drug dealers, maybe even drug addicts.
U.S. officials, on the other hand, claim the legal authority to assassinate anyone in the world as part of their war on terrorism. That, of course, includes American citizens, who can be shot on sight even here in the United States if the team of national-security state bureaucrats places them on the kill list.
There are those who claim that drug-war violations are different from acts of terrorism in that the former are criminal offenses while the latter are acts of war. Not so. Terrorism is a federal criminal offense, just like drug offenses. If you don’t believe me, look it up in the U.S. Code. Or go ask any federal judge in the land. Or just walk into federal courts in Washington, D.C., New York City, Alexandria, Virginia, Detroit, Michigan, and elsewhere and watch the criminal prosecutions for terrorism that periodically take place in those venues.
Where many Americans have become confused is over the fact that the military has become involved in enforcing terrorism laws. The notion is that if the military is involved, that must mean that terrorism is automatically converted into an act of war. Not so. It simply means that the military is involved in law enforcement, just as the Filipino military is involved in drug-law enforcement in the Philippines and just as the U.S. military is involved in drug-law enforcement in Latin American countries. Military involvement in criminal law enforcement doesn’t convert the drug war into a real war. Drug offenses remain criminal offenses, just as terrorism offenses do.
Chile under Pinochet comes to mind. When that military strongman took control in a coup sponsored and supported by the U.S. government, he immediately implemented a tyrannical program that took suspected communists and suspected terrorists into custody, indefinitely detained them, tortured them, raped them, and executed them, all without due process of law. The assassination program was later formalized in a top-secret project known as Operation Condor, of which the CIA was a partner and facilitator. In fact, there is a high probability that the U.S. national-security state has modeled its war on terrorism international assassination program on Operation Condor’s war on communism assassination program.
As with Duterte’s assassination program and the U.S. national-security state’s assassination program, Pinochet provided no due process of law to any of his victims — that is, no notice of charges and no trial. Just punishment. Operation Condor killed tens of thousands of people, including former Chilean official Orlando Letelier, who Condor agents assassinated on the streets of Washington, D.C. And, of course, there were two American citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who were executed by Pinochet agents, working with the support and authorization of U.S. intelligence agents. Their “crimes”? Supporting the socialist regime of Salvador Allende, who Pinochet and U.S. officials opposed, discovering evidence of U.S complicity in the coup, and opposing the U.S. government’s war on Vietnam. Once again, no notice of charges and no trial. Just extra-judicial execution.
When the chief justice of the Philippines Supreme Court objected to Duterte’s tactics, Duterte responded by threatening martial law. The probability is that the Philippines supreme court will acquiesce to Duterte’s assassination program as easily as the U.S. Supreme Court has acquiesced to the U.S. government’s assassination program. Judiciaries that operate under a national-security state type of governmental system fully realize where the real power of the government lies and are not about to confront such power directly.
Duterte’s tactics should cause every American to ask himself the following question: If winning the war on drugs entails permitting the federal government to exercise the same powers that President Duterte is exercising to win the war on drugs in the Philippines, is the drug war worth it, or would America be better off by bringing an end to this failed government program that has caused so much damage to the liberty, privacy, and well-being of the American people?
Unfortunately, things are about to get worse in the Philippines. According to Business World Online, President Duterte has just told his military forces to prepare to wage a war on terrorism. Undoubtedly, he plans to use the U.S. government’s war on terrorism as his model.