Subverted Justice
I agree with Glenn Garvin's positive review of Killing Pablo and his critique of the War on Drugs ("A Splendid Little Drug War," January). But I take issue with his one-sided portrayal of the hunt for Escobar. Garvin complains that the U.S. "subverted" the Colombian criminal justice system to catch a drug lord, but he leaves out an important part of the tale.
For several years the Colombians, with U.S. support, tried to bring Escobar to justice through normal channels. It was impossible. Escobar either bribed or killed anyone in a position to threaten him. Cops were killed in scores. Judges were killed, and others refused to hear cases out of fear. Attorneys were killed. Politicians were killed. And the families of all these people -- they were killed, too. Pablo even had a name for this strategy: plata o plomo, silver or lead. If someone wouldn't take the silver, hit him with the lead.
Over the course of his "career," Escobar was responsible for literally thousands of deaths. Los Pepes was an organization not just of Escobar competitors, as Garvin suggests, but also of prominent Colombian families who were fed up with the government's inability to stop the slaughter.
Although the U.S. may have gone after Pablo for the wrong reasons, the violence he used to protect his empire more than justified the actions taken against him and those who worked for him. No sane person questions America's right to go after bin Laden. Escobar was no different -- maybe even worse, because he was just in it for the money. How much more death would Escobar have had to cause before Garvin would have approved of extra-legal methods to stop him? Do his victims count less because they were Colombians, not Americans?
Escobar himself effectively destroyed the Colombian justice system. To complain about going outside it to bring him to justice is naive.
Daniel Welch
Via e-mail
Glenn Garvin replies: Mr. Welch is quite right about Pablo Escobar's subversion -- perhaps "violent suppression" would be a more appropriate phrase -- of the Colombian criminal justice system. And I hope I made it plain in my review that I didn't shed any tears about his death. But I cannot comprehend how the murder of his maids and horse trainers by Los Pepes advanced the cause of justice. These people weren't accidentally caught in a crossfire; they were deliberately targeted for killing, usually in as cruel and violent a manner as possible. The U.S. government would never have countenanced this in a campaign against a bank robber or a child molester or even a terrorist -- witness the Pentagon's reluctance to launch a missile attack on Mullah Omar's convoy at the beginning of the air war in Afghanistan. But somehow the fact that Escobar was a narcotrafficker made it OK.
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