Reflections on Drug War

Colombia's President Andres Pastrana meeting with U.S. President GW Bush and a personal trip to see some childhood friends in Colombia has caused me to reflect on drug wars in my life. My childhood friends and I grew up in the South Bronx in New York City and heroin was the major drug in our neighborhood during our teens. We decided to fight to get it out of our neighborhood after seeing it further enslave and kill people. We found that the fact of heroin being illegal didn't make a difference as it made money for organized crime and police, who were happy to bust those, only those, who didn't pay them. My friends and I, who were called gangsters, failed and the forces of law and order made me pay with a trip to Vietnam on trumped-up charges. You can read Serpico and The Knapp Commission Report as I did when I got back from Vietnam instead of taking my word for NYPD involvement with organized crime and the drug trade. The U.S. role in the drug trade in Vietnam can be read in Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia among other books.

The U.S. is paying Colombia more than $1 billion to wipe out coca fields. In the last two years, a couple of hundred U.S. military advisors have trained two special anti-narcotics battalions of the Colombia military. U.S. is also providing satellite maps and Blackhawk helicopters for coca fumigation. These are facts that the U.S. government will admit to openly! My trip to Colombia, which included Bogota and the Putumayo province, made me remember my teenage years as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam. I saw 1) A country with a vast majority of its population struggling to survive. 2) U.S. advisors' training and that represents an elite that seems to have little concern with killing anyone who voices opposition. 3) A civil war. 4) An Aerial spraying program that did great damage to the environment including the people who live in it. 5) A terror program to depopulate areas where guerrilla forces operate. 6) The U.S. government acting to protect corporate and elite interests in its never-ending role as "The Cops of the World."

My experiences in Vietnam make it impossible for me to sit back and digest the "Shit" used to justify U.S. intervention in Colombia.