The two wars we are fighting as a nation are never-ending wars. The older war, The War on Drugs, is a self perpetuating war that practically pays for itself in confiscated property, bank accounts, and kickbacks from smugglers paying law enforcement under the table. The facts are; there are just as many people that are using illegal drugs now, than at any time in our nations history. Who says this? The very people that run the war on terror. This has been a thirty year war that we have been waging and we have not put a dent in this war yet. The only thing that we have managed to do is to incarcerate Americans that have a substance abuse problem, and to ruin thousands upon thousands of peoples lives. We have also managed to usurp the Constitution time and time again with illegal search and seizures and to make the business of drug running a very dangerous (but lucrative) thing that has caused needless deaths in neighborhoods that have a large scale drug problem.
We have made the penalties for drug running and dealing drugs so stiff the criminals that run these enterprises don’t think twice about using murder as a regular business practice. We have regulated the drug business into the African-American neighborhoods where young black men see the only way to make money and possibly have the things that our society says they should have, is by dealing drugs. Congress and State governments throw money at this fight against drugs. Drugs mean money to law enforcement. Eliminating the drug problem in many cities would mean loss of revenue for many agencies. This is a self perpetuating war. We have been fighting it for thirty years and we will be fighting it for another thirty years. The greatest crime when it comes to people taking drugs, is that it has made criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens that break no law but the ones that come between them and their addiction. We can continue this war on drugs and ruin peoples lives, continue to cause the murders of policemen and drug dealers and users, keep providing the environment that creates millionaires by selling illegal drugs and ruin the chances of young people that see in drugs the promise of easy money, or... we can change tactics.
Thirty years of fighting the war on drugs as a conventional war is just not working. We have no outstanding success stories of localities that have cleaned up their drug problem to the point that it has gone away for good. The problem now is exactly the same as when the war was launched. Why not try to control the drug problem instead of trying to eliminate it? Why not just legalize drugs? Why not put them under government control and wipe out the middlemen such as the Columbian Cartels and other similar entities? Take drugs out of the hands of criminals. The government can sell drugs and keep the profits as well as tax them. The money could be used for treatment facilities and counselors. The money could be used to provide medical care and detoxification for drug addicts. The money could be used for education. No longer would neighborhood heroes be the drug dealers. We would be able to put a dent in the younger people having access to drugs. We could sell drugs that are free of potentially dangerous fillers and other harmful substances and take the manufacture out of the hands of people that don’t understand what they are doing. The pros outweigh the cons in this. The only thing that stops us from doing this is that people who are benefitting from the Status Quo will never let this happen. They will decry it by saying our addiction rates will skyrocket, and the people who will claim this are the people that are being paid to run this failed “War on Drugs”. Drug addiction will not “skyrocket”. People that are prone to addiction will become addicts if the drugs are legal or illegal.
The “War on Terrorism” will also be around forever. Since the beginning of time there have been terrorists. For a nation to believe that they can stop terrorists is to use the same kind of rational that believes you can stop people from taking illegal drugs. You can kill ten terrorists and there will be ten more to take their place. Of course I don’t propose to legalize terrorism, but we need to take a fresh view on it. Terrorists are usually terrorists for a reason. Either they have convinced themselves that there is no other recourse to their plight except to lash out with terror at their enemies, or they are just mentally ill. I don't believe that all terrorists are mentally ill. That leaves us with the first reason; they believe that the use of terror is a last resort to their problems.
Now here also we have a choice. Use pure unadulterated force against terrorists, and in the process kill so many terrorists that it breeds more terrorists, or work on the underlying causes of why people turn to terrorism. Sounds a lot like the same approach to stopping the drug use? The facts are, the two conditions are very similar. Anyone with a little commonsense can figure it out. Humans are pretty much the same whether they are American, Arab, Black, White, young or old. We all want very much to be recognized as individuals that have rights and a degree of worth. Mazlow has a hierarchy of needs, and once a human’s basic needs have been met, people can than begin to self-actualize. That means that they can, to coin a phrase, “Be all that they can be”. The first level of Maslow’s needs is food and shelter. This is Maslow’s Hierarchy:
Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs
You see the second tier is security. The Third is Esteem, and the top is Self actualization.
Instead of buying weapons, and training people to kill, we would be better off trying to find out how we can meet the needs of the people turning to terrorism and drug abuse These “Wars” solve nothing except to drive up the ego’s of the people that are fighting them. In the end, they will be fighting these wars in perpetuity.
The Iraqi people were promised an end to Saddam’s rule and a nation where they could rule themselves the way they saw fit. Instead, we occupied their country and set up a puppet government that gave away their banks and bridges to foreign interests. We disbanded their police and military with de-baathification and the country is now overrun by militias. The Iraqi people have been suffering for over a hundred years. First by Great Britain and then own despots and now us. It is unfortunately true that we are taking their oil, the only real resource they have. It is unfortunately true that Iraqi’s have no security and most don’t even have basic needs met. Still we keep waging a war that will go on forever.
It’s about time that this government of ours tried to use its head instead of force to solve problems. We have spent almost a half TRILLION dollars on this “war without end”. We could have bought all of the oil we ever wanted with that money. We could have given everyone health insurance. We could have given all who wanted it job training. We could have put a big dent in drug abuse and we wouldn’t have our young people dying everyday, and being incarcerated for no intelligent reasons.
We have BIG problems to face. Global Warming is the big one. Starvation is another. Water for everyone in the world is another. Cancer and other diseases is another. The list goes on and on. We can, like little boys in the playground play war until these problems eliminate the human race, or we could get down to business and try to actually fix what is wrong. There isn’t all the time in the world to make up our minds. Time is a luxury we don’t have much of. You can choose to be part of the problem, or part of the solution. Hey! Is anybody out there?
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Tim was banned from the site for posting private email from the publisher to him on his blog, and then attacking the publisher and the site in emails and articles. OEN has no responsibility to publish articles from people who attack the site.
Tim's accusations that he was banned for his political positions are untrue. Check his articles. He repetitively wrote about and had published exactly the things he claimed he was banned for doing.
Former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. A regular contributor to OpEdNews, he is the author of Kimchee Kronicles and is currently at work on a new novel.
There's a heckuva lot of difference between a war and an occupation. The Busheviks want us to think of our troops being engaged in a war. Well, how can you be a "war president" if there's no war? "Occupation president" just doesn't have that ring, does it? Let's not buy into their framing arguments and words. What we have in Iraq is an occupation of Baghdad and some small areas outside Baghdad. There's no freakin' war!
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JAMES MCGHEE (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 4:06:35 PM
Drugs of all kinds are available in every city in the U.S. When you consider the tonnage involved it becomes clear that our government is the only entity capable of the necessary logistics. With the increasing privatazation of the prison system the greatest similarity between the two wars is that people are getting rich for worsening a problem that they created. Both wars guarantee a massive perpetual income. Check out the link below.
