A Failure of a War

by Dick Mac

War is a terrible thing.

I remember this poster from the 1960s that said: "War is not healthy for children and other living things." It seems so quaint now, but no less true. I also remember it being in full color, but I can't find that image anywhere.

Americans have not had a very good experience with war in my lifetime. Sure there have been some victories; but we've fought to a draw, or downright lost, a few, too.

The worst wars, those that cost the most and return the lowest level of success are the fake wars: the war on terrorism and the war on drugs come to mind.

The war on drugs has been such a failure that I am surprised more Americans have not concluded that the military must be protecting the drug trade.

The war on drugs has been as successful as our war on alcohol, in the early part of the last century. That is, it has been a complete, total, and absolute failure.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy has pronounced that the war on drugs is not working and that drug enforcement policy needs to fundamentally change. They are suggesting a policy switch that shifts the emphasis away from crime (drug use should never be a crime) to public health (untreated drug addiction costs society a fortune).

American conservatives will lose their minds over this of course, because they need to blame someone for their hatred of all things and it's easy to blame drug users and entire nations that produce drugs (but not the United States corporations that produce drugs, or right-wing radio hosts who are addicted to drugs).

By criminalizing drug use, conservatives get to sit on their high horse and pretend they are morally better than others and scare taxpayers into giving them bundles of money for their fake war against drugs.

Let's be clear about something: there is no evidence that the funds for the war on drugs were ever used to prevent the importation of drugs. Billions and billions of dollars worth of drugs flow freely into our country with only tiny amounts intercepted.

Let's compare this to the military's campaign against bananas. Yes, bananas.

In 2000, the war on bananas being fought between the European Union and the United States was finally resolved. When the EU was formed in the early 1990s, they implemented banana importation laws that favored their former colonies. This conflicted with US policy that favored the distribution of bananas from states controlled by US corporations.

If you remember, in the autumn of 2000 and early 2001, the United States Navy was able to blockade every ship carrying bananas that fell outside of the US plan. It was impressive! Not a single banana controlled by non-US interests made it through!

Oddly, though, that same military is unable to stop the flow of cocaine from the exact same region. Hmmmmmmmm . . .

Let's go back twenty years earlier than that. When Ronald Reagan became president, he promised an end to marijuana importation. The cost of reefer sky-rocketed as the Navy blockaded the Caribbean and stopped all the marijuana from getting to US ports. In the end, this was a major plus for marijuana consumers, as the domestically-grown product was far superior. Again, the Navy was able to stop everything they wanted to stop.

When the marijuana importation business was crippled, and the domestic crop had yet to be properly developed, cocaine replaced reefer as the drug of choice among white, middle-class Americans. Although the military was able to stop all the marijuana from making it to shore, and two decades later would succeed at preventing all the bananas from making it ashore, it was not able to stop the cocaine.

I have always found this rather suspicious. Call me a cynic, but it seems somewhat odd.

Well, it was Reagan's draconian marijuana policies that helped define both the war on drugs and the shift of drug use from relatively benign marijuana to incredibly dangerous cocaine.

Our War On Drugs has been an absolute failure. There is nothing the Reaganites (so-called conservatives) can point to and say: 'you see, the war on drugs was successful.' Billions and billions of dollars have been given to private security firms, military contractors and foreign governments, and no tangible result has been seen.

All this time (THIRTY YEARS), liberals have maintained that the war on drugs is a failure and money should be spent on treatment and education, not interdiction and imprisonment.

Come now, anti-American socialists like former Secretary of State George Shultz and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Paul Volcker, who . . oh, wait a minute . . . these guys aren't socialists at all; but they are saying America policy is wrong.

This commission is filled with our allies, client states, and the aforementioned Americans, and they have issued a report proclaiming that our drug policy is a failure.

Thank goodness!

Download their report here.

A report about the banana war.

If we're going to fuck the hungruy, at least we could pay them for it!

by Dick Mac

Republicans block child nutrition bill.

We have squandered our National Treasury on two worthless wars: one an unwinnable war against a concept, an invisible enemy called terror; and the other against a leader who didn't have any weapons of mass destruction but whose country has quite a bit of oil.

Then we gave the modest surplus in our Treasury back to the people who most benefit from expensive wars. Now, we are without funds to maintain civilization; but, the wealthiest among us are enjoying tax breaks between $80,000 and $1,600,000.

We have been told repeatedly that by giving this money back to the wealthiest among us, they will use that money to invest in new business and stimulate the economy so as to benefit even those even at bottom of the economic food chain.

We have been doing this for thirty years and not one single job has been created by this notion; in fact, the people who most benefit from those tax breaks are moving most of the jobs they control off-shore to other nations, leaving Americans even less-employed.

So we are fighting a war against a concept like "terror" (a war that cannot be won any more than we can win a war against inanimate objects like "drugs"). Then instead of improving our own military, the government is spending a ludicrous amount of money hiring "consultants." These "consultants" are what we used to call mercenaries. They are expensive. We are fighting an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy and paying the highest possible dollar amount for it.

We are spending something like ten billion dollars a month on these wars. The rich are paying less for civilization than they ever have in the history of civilization. The nation's infrastructure and government are crumbling. The gap between the rich and the poor widens on a daily basis. We are unable to educate our children and we blame the teachers for it. We are unable to care for the sick and we blame the hospitals as they are closing. And we are letting the hungry go without food.

Is this America? Is this the America that became the greatest nation in the world, in the history of humanity?

No, this is Reagan's America. An America that is a regional power at best that can't win a war with the world's most expensive military, is held in disdain by its closest allies, is watching its housing market crumble, its citizens sink into unpayable debt, its children without a decent education, its population without any hope of surviving a major illness, and the wealthiest 2% earning more than anyone could ever have imagined refusing to help fund the civilization from which they have so greatly profited.

I hear so-call "conservatives" talk about restoring America. To what? I thought this is what "conservatives" wanted. A small, ineffective government with a bloated military, and dwindling social services. A nation that can't even feed its hungriest children.

This is what you wanted, and this is what we've got.

So, all you working people who vote Republican: keep it up, soon you'll be hungry, too. Soon, you won't even be able to afford teabags!

Afghani Poppies

In the mid-1980s, the price of heroin plummeted to new lows. This was a boon for heroin addicts and casual opiate users (if there is such a thing as casual opium use).

The drop in price was connected to the increase in poppy production in Afghanistan, which was the final theater of the Cold War, where American taxpayers unknowingly handed over gazillions of dollars to religious terrorists who were doing the bidding of the Reagan Administration.

American tax dollars poured to warlords and imams (including the now infamous Osama binLaden) who took control of Afghanistan and turned it into a theocratic state that would, with the fall of the Soviet Union, be bullied into submission by the Taliban.

The USSR and the USA were using, empowering, and enriching a tiny number of people in Afghanistan, which threw the populace into a spiralling poverty that left few options for earning a living. Opium production became a primary income for almost half the population.

Afghanistan is a nation of 30 million people.

They have been devastated over the past 25-years by all the major players in the are. First they were conquered by the Soviets, then liberated by the US-funded Taliban, then stabilized by religious fundamentalists money funnelled in from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The best part of this phase of recent Afghan history is that the economy began to stabilize. It was a cultural and political nightmare, but the economy was stable, which prevents civil war.

Sadly, the stabilization provided by the Taliban included the rise to power of religious fundamentalists who planned and carried out heinous attacks on civilians of the Western world.

The United States was now obliged to destabilized the theocratic regime we had empowered.

In 2002, we began our war against Afghanistan, and chased the Taliban out of power. We pretended that we wanted to catch the bad guys, but since the bad guys are the children of powerful world leaders and businessmen, we let them escape into the hills and find succor in the bosom of Pakistan (another of our not-very-nice client states).

We have empowered a new regime. Things aren't going well. Some of the people we failed to empower this time around have been empowered by theocrats who see the re-destabilized Afghanistan as a new market for their own profiteering.

The lack of stability has forced many Afghanis back into opium production, and into the embrace of theocrats who do not like the United States.

It is estimated that opium and heroin production account for half the current GDP in Afghanistan. The other half of the economy is supported by a combination of small markets and foreign aid (mostly foreign aid). But, when a farmer who is now growing opium goes to the market to buy a shovel, pail, and dry goods for his home, it means that opium production is supporting that market. So, if half the economy is based on growing opium and processing heroin, then some percentage of the remaining 50% is thriving because those poppy growers and heroin producers are buying equipment, clothes and food. I think this would probably mean that closer to 60-70% of Afghanistan's GDP is based on poppy farming and heroin production. The remaining 30-40% is foreign aid.

How does this war on terror in Afghanistan which has led to the highest production of heroin in history work with our war on drugs here at home?

Since the United States is the only nation funding a War on Drugs (one of our most ludicrous campaigns), and the rest of the world wants to actually control drug production and the drug-distribution industry, we are at odds with even our closest allies on this issue. Our draconian drug laws, which often cause mothers to be imprisoned for life whilte businessmen who steal billions walk free, prevent us from taking a morally feasible position on a global platform.

It seems to me that our reasons for fighting wars are misguided and our methods for fighting wars have never worked in the modern world.

It seems to me that we are not winning any wars anywhere. Not abroad, not at home, nowhere. Maybe we need to regroup.

Here's some interesting reading from a variety of sources:

Taliban Rising, The Nation, October 30, 2006

Afghan Poppy Trade, Trade Environment Database

Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban, Paradise Engineering

Canadians not keen on U.S. poppy eradication plan, Canada.com's National Post