cannabisnews.com: Vietnam All Over Again - The Colombia Drug War





Vietnam All Over Again - The Colombia Drug War
Posted by FoM on July 07, 2000 at 17:52:10 PT
By David Nyhan, Globe Columnist
Source: Boston Globe 
History of political instability. Rich people still screwing over poor people as they've done from the Year One. Decades-old guerrilla war that began with machetes and shotguns now escalating to big-time weapons. US government sends money. Political advisers. Military advisers. More money. Now it's two kinds of military helicopters. Haven't we seen this movie before? 
The Americanization of Colombia's civil-drug war looks and smells like Vietnam all over again. Twenty-five years after Saigon fell like a rotting plum from the grasp of Uncle Sam and the corrupt and incompetent South Vietnamese regime, we're trying the same dumb thing all over again. Oh, did I mention the herbicide? Just as we blanketed Southeast Asia's jungles and peasantry with Agent Orange, we're getting ready to contaminate the hillside drug crops of Colombia with herbicide. All in the name of preventing American drug addicts from smoking, swallowing, snorting, shooting, and otherwise making themslves first very high and then very low with cocaine and heroin. We are exporting the wrong solution to a problem we won't face up to right here at home. Money is no object. Here, we pay any price, bear any burden, right? Wrong. The $1.3 billion Congress just approved for Colombia on the Clinton administration's say-so is good money after bad.The loot was wrapped up in one of those fiendishly concocted congressional stews: big bones for farmers; medium-sized cutlets for emergency aid for hurricanes and forest fires from last year; lavish dollops of this and that for lobbyists from here and there; add a little pork, a lot of seasoning to kill the smell, and, presto, you have an omnibus spending bill that legislators want in an election year to grease their return to the trough. So the money for Colombia was on rails. It was wired. There was no way you were going to stop it. Too many lawmakers were turned into sausage-makers, grinding up the scraps to serve up one giant kielbasa of a spending bill, pork sausage by the trainload. Too many of our solons had catheters running into their gluteus maximus from the intravenous bank labeled ''pork/saline solution.'' A drip here, a drip there, and now 60 brand-new US military helicopters are on their ponderous way south, ready to zap guerrillas on the orders from somebody in Bogota.If there was a sound track to accompany this script, it would be the ''duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh'' of ''Jaws,'' the ominous incantation of something very bad about to unfold. Yet again we embrace a pricey, high-tech solution to a problem that is rooted in human nature, not in the chemistry lab of the herbicide cooker-uppers. I am not some fungicidal maniac on the point. I've never been anywhere near Colombia. But we're making their problems our problem - big mistake. Our drug fighting civil servants, our military, and our biological warfare researchers have concocted this scheme, and the environmental people are dubious in the extreme, according to yesterday's New York Times exclusive unmasking the program.Because of the exquisite vulnerability of the politician - any politician - to the deadly taunt of being ''soft on drugs,'' many otherwise sensible legislators panic and bolt when confronted with honest choices about the human propensity to self-dose with mind-altering chemicals.This particular virus is at its most virulent in election years, peaking in the fall. So rare is the congressman who proclaims that this whole approach is a fraud, a massive, expensive, hollow, and cynical exploitation of parental fears designed to reward cunning lobbyists and careerists in cushy slots. It won't work. Can't work. It's the wrong war, in the wrong hemisphere. The enemy is within, not without.The enemy is human nature. The problem, dear Brutus, is not within our stars but in the gene pool of frail and fragile drug addicts here who will lie, cheat, steal, and murder for a chemically induced endorphin rush.Because our politicians refuse to recognize the drug debacle is a crisis of demand and not of supply, we externalize the problem. We are trying to build a fortress around Colombia and contain the problem there. It cannot work. What about Mexico? Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle? There are not enough soldiers and helicopters and narco informers to keep track of the flow. We already know we cannot keep contraband narcotics out of our maximum security prisons. How are we going to do it in a jungle 6,000 miles away? The most honest and practical solution is to decriminalize the use of all narcotics. Tax its distribution. Furnish detox beds for everyone willing to try to shake the demons. And recognize there will be casualties. Just as some Americans cannot tolerate alcohol and kill themselves, we'll have to accept drug-related slow-motion suicide. Some will say ''never!'' But that same old old argument will pitch global society into an ever deepening cycle of corruption, exploitation, and erosion of honest government if we allow the fantastic flows of drug money to gain more traction. Human nature cannot resist the lure of fortunes to be made dealing drugs illegally. The poor farmers who get more for coca leaves than coffee beans will keep doing it no matter how many choppers fly overhead. And our addicts will keep snorting, shooting, and swallowing what they crave until their inner spritual emptiness is filled. We can poison the Andes and slaughter peasants and reelect the same tired politicians every other year. It's Vietnam redux: If it's not working, double the tonnage.E-mail: letter globe.com Published: July 7, 2000Copyright: 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.Related Articles:Colombia Tries New Drug Eradicationhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6318.shtmlThe U.S. Is Setting A Trap for Itself In Colombiahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4979.shtmlNew Vietnam in the Makinghttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4527.shtml
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Comment #6 posted by chops102182 on February 27, 2001 at 09:08:44 PT:
BULLSHIT
....THE WHOLE WORLD IS FUKKED...ALL WE CAN DO IS LIVE OUR LIVES THE WAY WE WISH TO...ANYONE WHO STEPS IN OUR WAY WILL BE DESTROYED....CANNIBUS BRINGS US TOGETHER, HUMANITY KEEPS US ALIVE!
for a little relief...
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Comment #5 posted by adam ingersoll on February 14, 2001 at 07:13:19 PT
marijuana
fuck it: who gives a damn, Smoke weed!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #4 posted by marco on August 30, 2000 at 03:38:59 PT
the drug war is a farce
This war has nothing to do with drugs, and everything to do with supressing popular dissent. ELN and FARC have little to do with drug trafficing, but they will recive the brunt of this assult. These "left-wing gurillias" are mostly pessents just tring to get by, not the grave threat our leaders have been making them out to be. WE NEED TO WAKE UP NOW !!!
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Comment #3 posted by Dan B on July 08, 2000 at 17:29:06 PT:
Pointing Fingers Outside
This article brings up an important insight for me regarding the war on drugs (read: the war for the erosion of American freedoms): one reason this bit of legislation passed the Senate is that (in addition to the fact that several key politicians are deeply indebted to Sikorsky Aircraft, makers of the Blackhawk helicopter, and Bell Helicopter, makers of the Huey II helicopter), it gives them an opportunity to point the finger outside the U.S. for the problems some people in our country have with drugs. "It's all their fault," they say, pointing at the cartels (while ignoring the farmers who make their living growing not only coca and opium, but other crops interspersed with these). Meanwhile, the Senate refuses to divert some money from the helicopter-loving, human-rights-abusing Colombian military into treatment for Americans who actually want to kick their drug habits. The message is clear: "if they didn't make so much product, we wouldn't have so many problems." It seems that these politicians refuse to recognize an internal cause for our nation's drug problems because to do so would require introspection--would require them to examine the issue from an internal perspective. Introspection would inevitably leave them no choice but to admit that the drug war is a failure and a travesty--one of their own making. We must, then, continue to let them know that we are onto them--that we know they have failed us, and that until they mend their ways and stop persecuting people for making personal choices--even choices with which they disagree--they will never receive our support. And we need to let them know that our numbers are growing...
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Comment #2 posted by Scott on July 07, 2000 at 21:30:19 PT
The Boston Globe
I agree with yee about there being more articles dissing the Colombia plan now then there were articles about how horrible of an idea it was at the beginning. I do have to give props to the Boston Globe though, they have been very informative about the Colombia deal since day one. They even ran a 3 part series about it, discrediting it the whole time. Massachusetts is a very liberal state and their media is generally reflective of the political system. The Boston Globe, which I think is read throughout New England, has established a very strong stance AGAINST the war on drugs and everything attached to it. It's a lot like Kalifornia, which is a very liberal state with a liberal media that disapporves of the drug war, and so do a lot of people in the state (or so it appears). Liberals seem to be the ones that push for reform (like the Dutch), yet you would never expect them to. I guess it's because the liberals understand that if untaxed sales are going on they're gonna miss out on free cash. Who knows? The whole war on drugs is a big game, a game in which the 'good guys' have never been in front, and I don't think that the game will ever end until the good guys get ahead a little, which looks like never.
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Comment #1 posted by arcturus on July 07, 2000 at 20:33:48 PT
Ahhhh!
You know what's driving me CRAZY? Is that there have been at least double the number of articles in major newspapers critisizing the Columbian involvement since the thing passed than there were in the months before. Where were all these informed journalists then? I wouldn't be surprised if everyone, pols and all, have known this would get snuffed quickly "after" the money has been doled out to the contractors and Columbia. Remember the original focus? No one seems to be bringing that up anymore....oil.And (I'm preaching to the choir here) one big thing still needs to change on our home "front." This reporter, as do most who say we're screwing up in Columbia, focus on those bad, bad drug users back home; the ones who "lie, cheat, steal, and murder." And what's the solution? Make them stop taking drugs. All of them. The last stage of our victory is when we have an article in a major newspaper which talks about Columbia AND regulation. Maybe the coca farmers were meant to grow coca.
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