Letter
by Don Deichman to the Baltimore Sun
4/27/01
Dear Baltimore Sun Editor:I applaud your
4/25 editorial (Innocent Lives Too High a Price for Interdiction) on the
deaths of an American missionary and her daughter in the downing of their plane by the
Peruvian Air force. While you rightly advise that our agencies involved in interdictions.
suspend operation until assured that such an atrocity cannot recur, we also
need a deeper analysis.
There's no denying that narco-terrorist
trade in madness and death. But in a year research in Peru (and two
years Peace Corps work in Colombia) I saw a madness in U.S. policy that affects
those countries: since the 1950s, our grain pricing policy has been gradually, but
deliberately, moved away from New Deal parity pricing toward export
oriented pricing.
We confuse feeding a hungry world
with an export policy that unwisely undercuts farm prices abroad. Failing to put our farm
prices in balance (parity) with other prices in our economy has far-reaching consequences.
Stopping the drug trade has less to do with interdiction (and deaths of more innocents:
than with Re-thinking our own pricing and trade policies.
Sincerely,
Donald M. Deichman
16330 A.E Mullinix Road
Woodbine, MD 21797 |