Our War On Drugs

[poliphilo]

Everyone should watch Angus McQueen's three part documentary on the so-called War on Drugs. Episode 3- which exposes the mendacious twaddle our leaders feed us about Afghanistan- is the most devastating of all. Thanks to Western intervention that bloody-minded, intractable country is now a narco-state- and the source of about 90% of the heroin that is swilling around Europe. Karzai's government is soused in the stuff and the state machinery for fighting production and trafficking is the merest (but very expensive) fig leaf. Judges and policemen who come down too heavily on traffickers are warned off, sidelined or shot- and only the very smallest players are ever sent to jail. The border with Iran is wide and bare- a huge, dusty desert- and the junk goes rolling through in armed convoys while the border police smile and wave. The British and American authorities connive at all this because they need to keep the poppylords onside in the war against the Taliban. It's a preposterous situation. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Agreed on all points.

I think it important to note that the brutality and disproportionality of the US action against Afghanistan was very appealing to the rank and file of the Republican party, in particular, and to far too many Americans, generally. The cowards cheered the proposed slaughter in Iraq as well and bragged about how easy it would be to crush their enemies.

Consequently, I no longer see my fellow countrymen in the same light as I once did. In a way, I feel like I'm living among Brown Shirts -- or at least a darkish beige -- and wonder whether this nastiness will simply fade away or it will take a serious comeuppance to dissuade them from acting out again.