Wars on ideologies – how ridiculous a plan is that.

A war on an ideology is one of the most ridiculous thing we allow our government to declare, I will focus on two in today’s pontification. The war on drugs and the war on terror. According to Merriam-Webster.com the word War dates back to the 12th century Europe and definition 1 is “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations”. Definition 2 is listed as “a period of such armed conflict”, definition 3 is the "state of war", the art or science of warfare”. The list goes on and on but I could not find one of them that work in these situations.

In 1937 Congress passed the "1937 Marijuana Tax Act" and made marijuana illegal and a highly fineable offense ,that was really the beginning of the war on drugs. Over the last 30+ years there have been many a modification to America’s drug policy. In 1968 the Johnson administration consolidates several drug agencies into the Justice Dept.'s Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). In 1969 Washington DC’s Mayor approves a program to provide methadone to heroin addicts. In 1971 at a press conference President Nixon names drug abuse as "public enemy number one in the United States." The War drugs is officially started before the end of the other war going on at the time, the one that fits the definition although we did not officially call it a war. This is just another fine example of our government at work for us. It wasn’t until Nancy Regan took up the cause in the early 80’s which culminated with the “just say no” campaign that was launched in 1984. Since 1937 the number of dollars spent on a war against an ideology is not even countable and where has it gotten us? If we spent that much time and money on a real war our country would be protesting in the streets like they did during the Vietnam conflict.

So why do we do it, declare war on an ideology? I have a sneaking suspicion, at the core, that it is about politics and what the folks with the most money are passionate about. There is a long chain of events to get from having a cause to having a war declared by the US government, that road is paved with gold I assure you. Most people who have a passion and enough money to do something about it have non altruistic motives, it seems to me anyway. So what does that mean? It could mean they have a vested and usually financial interest in the success of their passion. One might ponder why Harry Anslinger claimed cannabis caused people to commit violent crimes, act irrational, and act overly sexual. Were those conclusions based on actual data or maybe from the propaganda films he had produced that promoted his views or maybe because Anslinger himself often commented to the press regarding his views on cannabis and maybe, just maybe he started believing his own press. There was political clout in the cause, it doesn’t really matter why he was able to get the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act passed but he did and I would bet anything that he benefited personally from its passage.

According to the Cato Institute, the US spends between 40 and 60 billion to fight the war on drugs. 40-60 billion, I remember when that seemed like a HUGE number, it still is but does not seem so big after the recent spending spree coming out of Washington. What that means is there are LOTS of people who are benefiting financially from the war on drugs. Moreover, you know what – they suck at it! In a big way, they suck at it and we allow them to continue to flush that money down the toilet - because they have not stopped folks from getting stoned on whatever their drug of choice is. There is no bad guy to go and get, not in Mexico, not in Afghanistan, not in Columbia and not on the corner in any town USA so how do we propose we actually win this ridiculous war. 40-60 billion a year is almost as much as we are spending a year on the actual war we started with Iraq. Where in the hell is that money going and why aren’t we asking why are we supporting a program that has never and will never succeed.

Speaking of the war in Iraq - the ugly but cost effective part of the War on Terror. According to the Talk Radio News Service the Pentagon estimates it has spent $527 billion on war on terror since 2001, if you do the math that is almost 66 billion a year or about or about 12 billion a month. So that 527 billion is only what the Pentagon is spending, what is the CIA spending, what is the FBI spending, what is the NSA spending what is the bottom line of this ridiculous concept of a war on terror. I understand the importance of keeping us safe after the attack of 9-11 but could it be that someone or a bunch of someone’s are benefitting greatly from its continuation. We have created monsters and have allowed them to probe into areas they have no business. In my opinion, companies such as Halliburton with their myriad subsidiaries are milking the system in a big way. For example their subsidiary known as KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root has contracts in Iraq worth up to $18 billion, including a single no bid contract known as Restore Iraqi Oil which has an estimated worth of $7 billion dollars, and that is just a subsidiary. After an audit by the Defense Contract Audit Agency there were 108 million in questionable costs. I remember when 108 million dollars was a shit load of money but since our understanding of scale has been blow up by the many magnitudes of order bigger numbers bandied about lately and really what is 108 million amongst friends.

The part of part of the equation that I left out to this point is, what is the cost in human life? I am not talking about just the folks in the Military who take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I do think that honorable oath is being cheapened by focusing on the other part of that same oath, where they state that they will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over them. What about all the innocent Iraqi’s who have died, what about all the innocent Afghanis who have died what about all the other innocent people we don’t know about who have died due to our war on terror. Our war on terror is just as ridiculous as our war on drugs and both have claimed WAY TO MANY lives and for what, so we can feel like we are doing something. My last tour in the US Navy was on the USS Gettysburg and that ships motto was “Deeds Not Words”, words like war on terror, war on drugs are just that – meaningless words. Without deeds words mean nothing, now if we had some deeds, like a comprehensive program that educated and treated people fighting drug addiction and maybe some kick ass Navy Seals just going in and getting the bad guys when we could have would have been a much better use of our tax dollars than what we are doing now.

War on drugs, war on terror – ridiculous!