War on Drugs Redux

by Mike Seely, contributor

Whether it be on the silver screen, in our streetsor in the Persian Gulf, we Americans just can’t seem to get enough ofour wartime terminology, regardless of whether or not the shoeactually fits.

At the same time as moviegoers flock to catch a glimpse of Coppola’sApocalypse Now: Redux, another Republican President has engagedAmerica in a “war” on an enemy whose perennial elusiveness may welloutstrip the more noble intentions of its targetting.

With Reagan, it was “The War on Drugs.” With Bush, Jr., it’s “The Waron Terrorism.” While the battlefield hooey may be politicallyexpedient, such careless branding runs the risk of giving Americanserroneously high hopes. And beyond their shared sound byte shuffle,the two campaigns (a far more appropriate term than “war,” by the way)have more in common than one might think.

Only the most hard-line “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” crusaderwould buy into the War on Drugs’ initially shallow notion thatencouraging kids to “Just Say No” and imprisoning them if they don’tis a cure-all. In fact, through recent changes in law committing drugoffenders to treatment instead of prison, some localjurisdictions—most notably the State of California—have all butacknowledged that this “war” has failed miserably and is in need of aserious overhaul.

Chances are, if you could bottle up America’s collective opinion,you’d probably find that the preferred method of dealing with drugoffenders would be a mixed approach: utilizing prevention andtreatment options with the addicted while punishing the high-volumedealers who feed their addiction. Legalization and government controlof narcotics, a viable option abroad, is simply not politicallysaleable at this point in American history.

Certainly, nobody’s pushing to legalize terrorism, but a similarlymultifaceted approach should be considered if the “War on Terrorism”is going to yield anything close to its desired effects.

At this point, if the American public has, as expected, munched onBush Administration blather and swallowed it whole, our nationprobably believes that this is a war we can win in a reasonablycompact amount of time. But make no mistake about it, folks, whileaspiring to “wipe out terrorism” is indeed ambitious, it’s arguablyunattainable. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t make aggressive,steadfast efforts to stop terrorism—it’s just that we should allrealize that this is a “war” that will last nothing short offorever, just like the “war” on drugs.

Don’t believe me? Then look no further than South America’s cocaineproduction. The US has poured billions of dollars in an effort tobreak up cartels and eliminate coca crop production, and yet the drugstill thrives. Unfortunately, terrorism is probably a far moregeographically dynamic and complex problem than stifling drugproduction. There are cells all over the world. Break up one of them,and there’s sure to be another one sprouting up in its wake.

This is where treatment and prevention come in and, in fairness, theBush Administration’s pledge of $320 million to fight famine and othersocietal ills in non-Taliban Afghanistan is a promising development.But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Breaking down the causations ofterrorism and what can be done to prevent them will require a fargreater commitment of intellectual and diplomatic firepower thanwhat’s currently being set in motion via military movements andintelligence stings.

To do this entails a massive amount of foreign aid and study—startingwith a peek in the mirror. How do other countries feel about us andwhy? What can America do to improve perceptions? Need we be lessstrident in our push for worldwide democracy? Perhaps—and we should beopen to change.

We also need to douse our current blaze of patriotic euphoria withsome global-minded retardant. Are treaties such as Kyoto really thathard for us to live with when there’s clear international consensusbehind them? Is Cuban communism, while not ideal, really the bubonicplague we think it to be? Our diplomatic weakness of late has beenthat we’ve chosen to treat global connectivity like a dictatorshipwith the US at helm, when we should probably have been applying ourown standard of democracy to the way we deal with other nations.

Our latest “war” will not end when Osama bin Laden and his cronies arecaptured and/or killed, a difficult endeavor in and of itself. Infact, this is a war that will not and should not end, as it iscomplacency and a false sense of achievement that inevitably lead to acomplex problem’s recidivism—as with drugs.

So let’s just be honest about it, and dig in for the long, perhapseternal haul.

Mike Seely is a Seattle writer whose work has appeared inSeattle Weekly, The Stranger, Seattle Magazine, theWashington Free Press and Tablet, among otherpublications.