Losing the War

I think that we have to face facts. We are losing the war. It isn't the Bush Administration's fault. In fact there is so much blame to go around. We will not know when we've won this war. The rules of engagement have changed constantly. There is graft and corruption in the enforcement component. We hear a lot of rhetoric about the need to continue the fight (think stay the course), yet the latest strategy is not showing any more success than efforts of the past. Most of all, there is no plan for disengagement.

I've written in the past about my distaste for attempting to rally the public to a problem by calling it a war. The war I am talking about above could be the war on poverty, drugs or terrorism. Make no mistake, the "War in Iraq" is not a strategy or good choice for a field of engagement for the war on terrorism. Bush's folly has neither made the US safer from terrorist nor has it made terrorists any less effective in their ability to attack innocent people all over the world. What they haven't done and what has played into the sense of false hope, is to attack again the United States directly.

We fling about the macho word war as if we can rally a consensus on the righteousness of an issue such as the eradication of poverty or the use of illegal drugs. The problem is there is no consensus as to how to eliminate these problems. The latest effort to affect poverty is to redefine the problem to make is seem as if it has been affected. But the truth is that the throngs of working poor, people with part-time or full employment that rise above the federally designated poverty income threshold, has grown. The insecurity of living from paycheck to paycheck and the fear of being one serious illness away from bankruptcy has spread in the face of government inaction to this population and their needs.

The War on Drugs has effectively been a boon to the prison's both public and private across the nation. We incarcerate low level dealers and users while the real captains of this government created industry drive are driving the streets in Escalades. We have not impacted the use of drugs in our society, despite the best efforts of a lot of dedicated and well meaning law enforcement efforts. We could impact this problem immediately if we would face the fact that drug use is a problem, but it is not a law enforcement problem. We made it a law enforcement problem by making drug use illegal and, to make matters worse, required mandatory sentencing. A policy of treatment and decriminalisation of drug use would collapse the illegal drug trade and focus the society on the real problem, people who can not use drugs without abusing them.

If we are going to war, we owe to ourselves omething more than chest thumping rightousness. We need to have sober dialog in order to define the problem. To look without compassion instead of pure passion at problems that delve deep into our society and our conduct as humans. After all, drug problems cross all boundaries of class, race and income in our society and poverty can be inflicted on any one of us, given the right conditions. Many of these problems have no obvious solution, but they all involve our fellow human beings. If we want to be something other than another footnote in history, we must quit fighting wars and start addressing our problems rationally.