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October 30, 2001
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
John Pilger
Hidden
Agenda
of the War on Terror
David Krieger
Nukes on
the Loose
Jack McCarthy
Neo-Nazis
and 9/11
Marina Kalashnikova
The Brzezinski
Interview
Richard
Manning
Terrorism:
a definitive history
October 27, 2001
Edward
Said
A
Vision to Lift the Spririt
October 26, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Genocide
Scholar Gagged
Over Comments on the
Bombing of Afghanistan
Rahul
Mahajan
Poisoning
the Well
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why I Opposed
the
Anti-Terrorism Bill
John Troyer
Put
the War to a Vote
Norman Madarasz
What It
Means to be
Against the War
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance Attacks
US Bombing Strategy
Richard Lloyd Parry
Terrible Images
of a "Just" War
October 25, 2001
Ghassan
Andoni
Raid
on Bethlehem
N.D. Jayaprakash
From
Hiroshima to NYC
Evan Schultz
Memo
to Ashcroft:
Read Marbury
The Sunshine
Project
Assault
on the BioWeapons
Convention
Sarah
Turner
Cashing
In on Patriotism
Latin American Colloquium
on Systemology
The Meridia Manifesto
Noam Chomsky
The
New War on Terror
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Ashcroft's Onslaught
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Ridge Long Groomed
for Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
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A CounterPunch
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Responses to 9/11:
Chomsky, Russell Banks,
Zinn, and Alice Walker
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A Pocket Guide to
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The
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Al Gore:
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October 30,
2001
War On Terror?
It's As Bad
As War on Drugs
By Rep. Ron Paul
I would like to draw an analogy between the drug
war and the war against terrorism. In the last 30 years,
we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed war
on drugs. This war has been used as an excuse to attack our liberties
and privacy. It has been an excuse to undermine our financial
privacy while promoting illegal searches and seizures with many
innocent people losing their lives and property. Seizure and
forfeiture have harmed a great number of innocent American citizens.
Another result of this unwise war has
been the corruption of many law enforcement officials. It is
well known that with the profit incentives so high, we are not
even able to keep drugs out of our armed prisons. Making our
whole society a prison would not bring success to this floundering
war on drugs. Sinister motives of the profiteers and gangsters,
along with prevailing public ignorance, keep this futile war
going. Illegal and artificially high priced drugs drive the underworld
to produce, sell and profit from this social depravity. Failure
to recognize that drug addiction, like alcoholism, is a disease
rather than a crime, encourage the drug warriors in efforts that
have not and will not ever work. We learned the hard way about
alcohol prohibition and crime, but we have not yet seriously
considered it in the ongoing drug war.
Corruption associated with the drug dealers
is endless. It has involved our police, the military, border
guards and the judicial system. It has affected government policy
and our own CIA. The artificially high profits from illegal drugs
provide easy access to funds for rogue groups involved in fighting
civil wars throughout the world. Ironically, opium sales by the
Taliban and artificially high prices helped to finance their
war against us. In spite of the incongruity, we rewarded the
Taliban this spring with a huge cash payment for promises to
eradicate some poppy fields. Sure.
For the first 140 years of our history,
we had essentially no Federal war on drugs, and far fewer problems
with drug addiction and related crimes was a consequence. In
the past 30 years, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars
spent on the drug war, little good has come of it. We have vacillated
from efforts to stop the drugs at the source to severely punishing
the users, yet nothing has improved. This war has been behind
most big government policy powers of the last 30 years, with
continual undermining of our civil liberties and personal privacy.
Those who support the IRS's efforts to collect maximum revenues
and root out the underground economy, have welcomed this intrusion,
even if the drug underworld grows in size and influence.
The drug war encourages violence. Government
violence against nonviolent users is notorious and has led to
the unnecessary prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are
forced to pay for all this so-called justice. Our eradication
project through spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan,
breeds resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely
damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the
profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these
various countries.
Drug dealers and drug gangs are a consequence
of our unwise approach to drug usage. Many innocent people are
killed in the crossfire by the mob justice that this war generates.
But just because the laws are unwise and have had unintended
consequences, no excuses can ever be made for the monster who
would kill and maim innocent people for illegal profits. But
as the violent killers are removed from society, reconsideration
of our drug laws ought to occur.
A similar approach should be applied
to our war on those who would terrorize and kill our people for
political reasons. If the drug laws and the policies that incite
hatred against the United States are not clearly understood and,
therefore, never changed, the number of drug criminals and terrorists
will only multiply. Although this unwise war on drugs generates
criminal violence, the violence can never be tolerated. Even
if repeal of drug laws would decrease the motivation for drug
dealer violence, this can never be an excuse to condone the violence.
On the short term, those who kill must be punished, imprisoned,
or killed. Long term though, a better understanding of how drug
laws have unintended consequences is required if we want to significantly
improve the situation and actually reduce the great harms drugs
are doing to our society.
The same is true in dealing with those
who so passionately hate us that suicide becomes a just and noble
cause in their effort to kill and terrorize us. Without some
understanding of what has brought us to the brink of a worldwide
conflict in reconsidering our policies around the globe, we will
be no more successful in making our land secure and free than
the drug war has been in removing drug violence from our cities
and towns.
Without some understanding why terrorism
is directed towards the United States, we may well build a prison
for ourselves with something called homeland security while doing
nothing to combat the root causes of terrorism. Let us hope we
figure this out soon. We have promoted a foolish and very expensive
domestic war on drugs for more than 30 years. It has done no
good whatsoever. I doubt our Republic can survive a 30-year period
of trying to figure out how to win this guerilla war against
terrorism. Hopefully, we will all seek the answers in these trying
times with an open mind and understanding. CP
Ron Paul
is a libertarian/Republican who represents Texas's 14th congressional
district.
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