Absurd Afghan Push Under Way

Newly deployed American troops are in Afghanistan looking for a fight. They're going after Taliban and their cash crop:

The assault capped a day of fighting Saturday in the poppy fields, orchards and walled compounds of southern Afghanistan between newly arrived U.S. Marines and well dug-in Taliban fighters. It was a foretaste of what will likely be a bloody summer as Washington tries to turn around a bogged-down, eight-year-old war with a surge of 21,000 troops.

"This was the first time we pushed this far. I guess they don't like us coming into their back door," said Staff Sgt. Luke Medlin, who was sweeping the alley for booby traps as Marine Gunner John Daly covered him from behind when the Taliban struck.

Does anybody think this is going to work? All the Taliban have to do is retreat over the Pakistan border to safe havens. Or fight and die, because they'll be more to replace them. The Americans and NATO can go on like this for the next 20 years and they can't win. There's no winning. Afghanistan isn't going to turn into a western style democracy.

The poppy crop is their only economy. To bring "Drug War" morality to the situation is folly. It's not going to win friends.

The only argument for continuing this war is that it is combating terrorism. But with safe harbors in Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Algeria,(to name a few) it's like swatting at a single mosquito in Winnipeg during bug season. A small accomplishment that doesn't solve the problem.

Retreat. Get out. We have a great thing over here in North America. Let's stick to our territory and defend against it.

When Drugs Were Legal

Check out other classic "medicine" ads from days gone by.

via: Andrew Sullivan

Evil on Mexico's Northern Border

I continue to be shocked at the descent of Mexico into a violent and lawless place. For generations Americans would cross the border for a few days of fiesta. You'd be crazy to do it these days. 4 US citizens found strangled in Tijuana

TIJUANA, Mexico – The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The victims, ages 19 to 23 years old, were found tied up on Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.

UPDATE: I can't help but think of Steve Earle's song The Week of Living Dangerously

Well I headed south on 35 hell bent for vinyl
I hadn't never had her up past 55 before
Well somethin' 'bout that little red line always looked so final
Buddy you'd be surprised how fast a Chevrolet truck can go

Now, down in Mexico they've got a little place called Boystown
Where a man's still a man if you know what I'm talkin' about
Well, I walked into the Cadillac bar and I laid my cash down
I said "there's plenty more where that came from" and the lights went out

Well I woke up in a county jail 'cross the line in Laredo
With a headache and a deputy staring at me through the door
Well he said "Now how you got across that river alive, I don't know
But your wife just made your bail so now you're really dead for sure"

Shell Casings and Corpses

The title of a new horror movie? Nope. What British newspaper The Independent describes is littering the streets of Vancouver. From heaven to hell: 18 die as drugs war rages on streets of Vancouver

Once upon a very recent time, Vancouver had a clean, safe image. Nestled between a spectacular bay and snow-capped mountains, this Canadian city, which is twice the size of Birmingham, was described by The Economist as the most liveable in the world. Not any more. As it prepares to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, what it's got now is not cuddly, eco-friendly publicity, but blood-spattered streets littered with shell casings and corpses.

Vancouver is the battlefield in a war between myriad drug gangs, which include Hell's Angels, Big Circle Boys, United Nations, Red Scorpions, Independent Soldiers and the 14K Triad. Guns – often machineguns – are fired almost daily. "We've always been told by media experts to never admit that there is a gang war," the chief of police, Jim Chu, said last month. "Let's get serious. There is a gang war and it's brutal." Vancouver's Mayor, Gregor Robertson, confessed that the police are fighting a losing battle. Since mid-January, the city has recorded 50 gang-related shootings, 18 of them fatal. And the violence is not confined to seedy neighbourhoods. The cross-fire is happening in quiet, residential cul-de-sacs and the car parks of up-scale shopping centres. It's a suburban civil war.

(...)

In the long run, many British Columbians, on both left and right, accept that legalisation and regulation are the answer. Just the sales tax on C$7bn of drugs would pay for several hospitals and schools, policing costs could be reduced, property crime by addicts to pay for their drug habits would be slashed, and the gang wars could be quickly reined in. "But the international politics are unbelievable," said Dr Rob Gordon, director of Simon Fraser's school of criminology. "The DEA [US Drug Enforcement Administration] starts to foam at the mouth at the idea of there being a huge, legal marijuana farm just north of the border. Under George Bush, the concensus was that if Canada ever moved to exercise its economic sovereignty, they would shut the border down by searching every vehicle."

It's definitely getting that Chicago in the 1920's feel to it these days.

BC Premier Gordon Campbell is upset at the criticism.

"It's a shame that you have got some people that are going to try and take some cheap shots," Mr. Campbell told reporters following a speech.

"[People] will come here. They will discover not just Vancouver, but all of British Columbia. They will discover Canada, and the Asia Pacific, and I think they will be excited. It will be a great Olympics and I am sure The Independent will write the great stories when the time comes."

Tijuana: No More Cheap Spring Break Trips

I continue to be shocked by these reports about the Drug Wars in Mexico. Here's a report of the bleak situation in Tijuana from the Independent.

"In the past, the gangs had rules," says Victor Clark Alfaro, a local human rights lawyer. "They respected families. They didn't kill children. But those rules have changed. Now they don't respect anything. They'll kill anybody, and decapitate them, or cut the body, to send a message to society."

The breakdown in law and order stems from the 1980s and 1990s, when the US launched a crackdown on Colombian drug cartels, allowing Mexican syndicates to emerge in their place. Soon these groups controlled almost nine-tenths of America's entire supply of cocaine from South America. For many years, Mexico's cartels were largely left to get on with business, on the basis that they killed only their own kind. But the arrival of multi-party democracy to in 2000 – for 70 years, Mexico had been a one-party state – led to government crackdowns on their trade. These had some success. The Arellano Felix cartel, which for years controlled a north-west portion of the country, has lost most of its leaders, including, most recently, Eduardo Arellano Felix, one of the seven brothers who founded the organisation. He was captured in October, after a shootout at a house overlooking the city, which last week was still derelict, and riddled in bullet holes.

Unfortunately, when you arrest one drug baron, you do not kill off the trade. Instead, you create a vacancy, and a turf war. Most of the recent violence across Mexico, and in Tijuana in particular, has involved remnants of the Arellano Felix cartel battling rivals from the so-called Sinaloa syndicate, and Gulf Cartel, both keen to move in on the patch.

How long will the Drug War last before we realize that the cost is too high to continue fighting? They've ruined Colombia, and now they've ruined Mexico. It makes me sick reading this. As long as there is money to be made by smuggling illegal drugs, there is always going to be gangs and killings. Law and order breaks down, not the other way around.

Ex-Presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico Plead to End the War on Drugs

Seeing the devastation that the War On Drugs have brought to their countries, the three declare the war lost, and propose new thinking in this Wall Street Journal Op-Ed

Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country's achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico -- another epicenter of drug trafficking -- narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone.

I have posted the failed War on Drugs before: A Day To Examine Drug Prohibition and Macabre Drug War Deaths in Mexico

Drug War Front: Vancouver

There are plenty of jokes about hippy Vancouver pot heads, but the reality is that drugs are big business over here. BC Bud sells in large quantities down in the US. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has a grow op. As always, when illegal smuggling is highly profitable, people end up getting killed. It's not quite as bad as Mexico, YET.

The rash of violence in the Vancouver area, which has had 12 shootings in 16 days, is a result of "disorganized" and "reckless" gangs that have exploded in the province over the last decade, says a criminology professor.

Prof. Darryl Plecas of the University of the Fraser Valley said the number of gangs in B.C. has grown from about a dozen ten years ago to more than 100 today, a growth fuelled in part by an expanding drug trade.

This summer, I came home from work and my street was cordoned off, cops were everywhere, including in the sky in helicopters. It turns out somebody was gunned down 25 meters from where I live. A gangland "hit". Seeing the alley behind my apartment on the television news was surreal. Another time a body was found in the trunk of a car parked right outside my living room window. Cops even came to my door to ask if I had seen anything suspicious.

Macabre Drug War Deaths in Mexico

As I posted here last week, the War on Drugs is destroying Mexico. Last week an arrest was made of a man who had dissolved 300 bodies into vats of acid, at the behest of a drug lord. (here)

They call him El Pozolero (“the Stewmaker”), a macabre tribute to his grisly trade. Arrested last week in Tijuana, Mexico, Santiago Meza López has admitted to dissolving some 300 bodies in acid over the past 10 years. His victims, he said, were the enemies of a drug lord who paid him $700 per week for his work. In a bizarre statement, Meza López claims he only dissolved men, refusing to dispose of female bodies this way.

It’s the latest gruesome story to emerge from Mexico, which is in the grip of a brutal drug war. On Jan. 18, the severed head of a police chief was found in an ice cooler outside a police station near Ciudad Juárez (across the border from El Paso), reportedly left there as a warning between rival cartels. It was one of 15 execution-style killings in the area within 24 hours, the Mexican newspaper El Universal reported. On top of that, in December, eight soldiers and a police chief were found beheaded in Guerrero state.

Elected in 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made cracking down on the drug trade a priority. As his campaign has escalated, though, so has the backlash: more than 5,400 people died in drug-related violence last year, double the number from 2007. If it isn’t contained, experts caution, Mexico could become a failed state. Outgoing CIA director Michael V. Hayden has named the problems in Mexico and Iran as among the most urgent for the new U.S. government. And the U.S. Joint Forces Command has singled out Mexico and Pakistan as two states at risk of “rapid and sudden collapse.”

All these problems eminate from the US and it's ridiculous War on Drugs. All this to keep pot out of Peoria. (And they can't keep pot out of Peoria.)

I guess no more trips to Puerto Vallarta for a while.

The War on Terror Drugs

CBC reports that Canadian soldiers are going to go after drug dealers of Afghanistan opium. (story)

Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News soldiers would indeed target drug traffickers and drug production facilities.

"We're not going specifically to eradicate poppy crops, but we would go after proven drug traffickers with operations linked to the terrorists," he said.

The opium trade is the only thing in Afghanistan thing that can make a regular person any money. From growing it to dealing it. There will always be someone who is willing to risk it for profit. So knocking off a few of these guys is not going to stop the drug trade.

Drug War Collateral Damage: Mexico on the Verge of Collapse

Some scary news from Mexico as gang violence is taking over and the country is becoming virtually ungovernable. (article)

Mob murders doubled from 2007, taking more than 5,300 lives last year. Residents of the border cities of Juarez and Tijuana wake up each morning to find streets littered with mutilated, often headless bodies. Some victims are dumped outside schools. Most are just wrapped in a cheap blanket and tossed into an empty lot.

Many bodies go unclaimed because relatives are too afraid to come forward, meaning most killings go unsolved.

Warring cartels still control vast sections of Mexico, despite Mr. Calderon's two-year crackdown, and have spawned an all-pervasive culture of violence. No one is immune.

So what does the US do?

Still, the U.S. government is extremely supportive of the Mexican president. It recently handed over $400 million in anti-drug aid. Mr. Obama met briefly with Mr. Calderon in Washington last week and promised to fight the illegal flow of U.S. weapons that arm the Mexican cartels.

It looks like Mexico is going the way of Colombia into utter chaos. Is drug use in the US going down? You'd think a guy like Obama, who has admitted to smoking marijuana as a young man, might give some fresh eyes to this issue.

Is the War on Drugs Worth the Fight?

Radley Balko has a comprehensive essay on how much damage the war on drugs is having from police militarization, foreign policy blunders, damage to rule of law, record incarceration rates, and hurts people who need medical treatment. (read)

In the 1980s, the “war” part of the drug war got very real. America’s long (and wise) constraint on using the military for domestic policing began to blur, as states deployed National Guard troops to search for marijuana hidden in fields and forests and, in some cases, to patrol drug-riddled inner cities. The line between cop and soldier further blurred when President Regan authorized active-duty elite military units to train with narcotics police, and then again with the exploding use of paramilitary SWAT teams in America.

Only a handful of police departments had SWAT teams in the 1970s, and they were only deployed in total a few hundred times per year. That number soared to around 4,000 per year by the early 1980s. There are around 50,000 SWAT deployments per year today in America, and they’re primarily used to serve drug
warrants.

By the late 1980s, Congress had opened up the Pentagon’s cache of surplus military equipment for civilian police departments across the country to scavenge, again driven largely by the drug war. Millions of pieces of equipment designed for use on the battlefield—including guns, tanks, armored personnel vehicles, helicopters, grenade launchers, and armor—would now be used on American streets, against American citizens. Parallel to the rise of SWAT teams was the rise of the “no-knock raid” which sent cops barreling into private homes to look for dope, a particularly aggressive and violent method of policing, that has since left behind a predictable trail of tragedy.

I have written about this issue here: A Day to Examine Drug Prohibition

A Day To Examine Drug Prohibition

Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment regarding the prohibition of alcohol, the Wall Street Journal has an excellent Op-ed by Ethan A. Nadelmann examining the folly of the present day War on Drugs.

Some opponents of prohibition pointed to Al Capone and increasing crime, violence and corruption. Others were troubled by the labeling of tens of millions of Americans as criminals, overflowing prisons, and the consequent broadening of disrespect for the law. Americans were disquieted by dangerous expansions of federal police powers, encroachments on individual liberties, increasing government expenditure devoted to enforcing the prohibition laws, and the billions in forgone tax revenues. And still others were disturbed by the specter of so many citizens blinded, paralyzed and killed by poisonous moonshine and industrial alcohol.

...

Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves, and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block responsible public-health policies.

It is completely crazy that this continues. Marijuana should be legalized right away. It's not an attractive habit, and I mostly can't stand thin-skinned pot-heads, but really, it's their choice. Talk about people who don't harm others. Let them go listen to their Grateful Dead albums in peace. (They can be tiresome bores, but it's my right not to associate with them.) The fact that people can get criminal records for this or jailed is criminal in itself.

I'm from Ottawa. From the time you have your driver's license, you can take a 15 minute drive over the Quebec border and buy beer there. Technically the drinking age was 18, but nobody seemed to care, they never asked for ID. I grew up in a beer culture. I found out later in my early 20's, when I'd visit down to the US, that Americans as a whole were big dope smokers. Pot was their choice for parties. The simple fact was that it was easier to get dope than alcohol. 48 out of 50 states have a 21 drinking age that is rigorously enforced. It's a hell of a lot easier to walk down the street to your local dealer. One time in New Orleans, we were at a college house party and my friend and I were panicking over our low beer count. We were trying to organize a beer run. The Americans at the party were saying "relax, look at the bag of weed we have on the table, it will more than last all night." We were stunned. A party is over is the beer runs out where I come from. It just goes to show that pot is as mainstream to them as beer is to your typical Canadian hosers.

Legalization of hard drugs is more difficult to debate. Heroin and Crystal Meth ruin people. And those people become a menace and nuisance to society as whole. This plays out in Vancouver every day. Our property crime is one of the worst in North America because junkies need to feed their habit but can't hold down a job. I've personally witnessed people shooting up in broad daylight, even in the financial district. The Crystal Meth people go into psychotic rages, which is dangerous for the public but also for police and medical staff.

It's difficult to just turn around and legalize it. It feels like you are condoning its use. But whether we like it or not, it's easily and readily available on the street. It's a better idea if we can get it out in the open. We can use the tax money for treatment, and put the dealers out of business.

I've met a few people in my time who did recreational coke, and still held down jobs and were productive citizens. One time I was out with some people having after work drinks. A guy brought his friend along who was visiting Vancouver. We were on this very topic and I said, 'why shouldn't coke be legalized'? The visiting friend got very upset. He told me he had almost ruined his life doing "speedballs" which was some kind of cocaine mixture. He blew his and his wife's savings, almost lost his job, marriage crumbling, health affected, etc. He said we can't legalize it, it's too dangerous. We have to keep people away from it. But the point is, it was illegal when he was doing this and he got his hands on it anyway. Prohibition did nothing, and in fact probably made it easier for him to get these drugs.

So we really need to re-think this whole thing. Canada has become much more liberal about it, but the US remains steadfast in its folly.