The War on Stupid

The War on Drugs, just like the War on Terror, drags on pointlessly. Wasting billions of dollars, millions of lives, and precious time with no progress made and no goals met. And not just because the Founding Fathers themselves grew hemp either.

Rather, declaring war on anything, especially abstracts, is a cash bonanza like few others. And with hyperreal grifters like the Bush administration, the most deadly weapon in the war chest is language itself. You start throwing around loaded terms and the next thing you know, Congress gives you military authority to do everything from spy on your own citizens to waterboard someone else's in the same torture rooms that caused you to invade in the first place.

Pardon my tone, but some things you just have to laugh at. What else can you do, really? (Ask Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert about that one.) Especially when the terrorists your draconian administration tackles after the Saudi-fueled mayhem of 9/11 end up being people like Seymour Hersh and Tommy Chong, or the National Education Association. This is the type of lunacy I tackled in a piece that went up on Alternet yesterday:

Pot Growers Are New Target in "War on Terror"

Last time we checked in on the bizarro nexus between cannabis and terrorism, it was none other than actor/director Tommy Chong who was feeling the Bush administration's post-9/11 wrath. In fact, the stoner icon, whose fabled act was concurrently resuscitated for Fox's drugged and confused comedy hit That 70s Show, was being slapped by John Ashcroft with a nine-month prison bid, a $20,000 fine and over $100,000 in seized assets for selling bongs. The terrorism connection? He was sentenced on Sept. 11, 2003. And if you think that's a specious connection, it's only gotten worse since. In fact, over the last few years, "terrorist" has become an epithet for all seasons... MORE @ ALTERNET

The latest "terrorists" this time around, according to the White House's Office of National Control Drug Policy, are Mexican cartels ferreting undocumented immigrants into Redding's national forests to grow weed. Because nothing says "I want to destroy your country, American infidels!" like raising crops for the sole purpose of getting you and your neighbors totally high.

OK, I'm joking. OK, I'm not. I thought it was hilarity until I recently read that our military campaigns in Afghanistan haven't defeated the Taliban or sniffed bin Laden's trail but have nevertheless managed to make sure the poor nation's heroin trade remained fully functional if not better than ever. Hey, wait. I get it now. They're fighting the War on Terror in Afghanistan, not the War or Drugs. OK, I feel better. OK, I don't.

I'm not here to tell you that anyone should be able to plant and cultivate crops of any type in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest whenever they feel like it. Or that Seymour Hersh can't try to hip the United States to neocon schemes for doomed occupations. Or that the National Education Association's millions of teachers can't have a lobby heckling the father of "No Child Left Behind" for some accountability. Or, at last, that Tommy Chong isn't high some of the time his son is selling bongs.

I'm just here to tell you that these people aren't terrorists. They're just targets, taken down by terminology.

Words have power. We cannot live without them, but we can also use them to imprison, oppress and even kill our fellow inhabitants of this lucky planet called Earth. In fact, we do it all the time, since before the Bible, Koran and every other narrative governments use to consolidate that power and, in the end, watch that contentious power fade into memory.

Comments

[Boyaca]

Actually there is a very good reason that drugs are not legalized. The profits from the business would vanish. How many politicians in Washington and the States are supported by drug money. Of course just like the arms manufacturers, the drug pushers expect and get no movement on legalizing drugs. They have their whores in Congress and the Sates Governments. Legalizing drugs in the good old USA would create the largest shortfall in supply of any product in the history of the country. If there was no momney to be made who would want to bring drugs from Colombia or anywhere else?

[Jason357]

Yeah. That's what's going on. Ollie North can confirm it.

[Jason357]

What does it tell us when someone at such a high level, and a US military officer, has White House approval to engage in drug trafficking and gun running.

[nypoet22]

from my poem:

Terrorists have gone to war.
"Were they there before we came?"
No, they came later
They plan to follow
Us home and attack us here.
"The war stopped them?" No,
They are coming anyway.

http://newyorkpoet.livejournal.com/25320.html

[CaptainObvious]

Unfortunately, the "War on Stupid" would probably leave us without a functioning government.

[charon]

Good outline of the Orwellian use of language and the distortion of reality by bushco. Bushco isn't f'ed up on drugs, they're just f'ed up naturally! (and maybe a little high on christ as well.)

Don't forget that the CIA has been implicated in smuggling heroin from Cambodia and Coke from Colombia. Why wouldn't they import huge quantities of horse from Afghanistan? And, it keeps the cops busy in the big cities, the prison guards employed, and the addicts quiet.

[NoContest]

Throw this on the pile of messes we should deal with as a nation. Along with all the other messes. I'm trying to think of one mess that existed before bush took office and has now been straightened up.

Well probably, the taxes were too high on the rich and he fixed that. And another one is ..........­.........

[snaggster]

Prisons are a growth industry. Gotta fill 'em up somehow.

[anon004]

"I thought it was hilarity until I recently read that our military campaigns in Afghanistan haven't defeated the Taliban or sniffed bin Laden's trail but have nevertheless managed to make sure the poor nation's heroin trade remained fully functional if not better than ever . . ."
Does this come under the heading of fighting (growing) it over there, so we don't have to fight (grow) it over here?

[Snakeback]

You identify the problpem early on:

"Rather, declaring war on anything, especially abstracts, is a cash bonanza like few others."

[jst418]

Read "Crossing The Rubicon" by Michael Rupert for a better idea on the whole drugs/oil/war on terrorism and why 9/11 happened, and why we're in Iraq when it was a bunch of Arabs, not Persians or Afghanis who flew into the WTC towers.

[AceInTheHole]

I sense that most of us have really grown tired and weary of these miscreants flim flamers, insulting our intellegence with their dumb crap.

I can't even understand how the "Bushbots" (Robot followers of Bush) can still be snickered by their dumb crap that's hellbent on issuing in Armageddon on their butts. It's like they are standing in line to receive a lethal dose of cancer.

Insanity must be the common thread that helps manifest this crap. My granddaddy used to say that the devil has to be the craziest sucker in the world, when you look at the choices he made to go to hell instead of heaven. And even I could not argue with that premise.

[didereaux]

You never quite get around to positing a solution, but in fact one might just be possible and as a result of a seemingly unrelated scientific discovery recently - the obesity epidemic may be partially fueled by a virus!

So, what is so far out with speculating that Dubya, the religious fanatics of the world, the watevers who are growing in both numbers and numbers of supporters­...are in fact infected with the 'Stupid Virus'!

Get off the schools backs(they're already infected, they are in constance contact with children) and start funding some research in the labratories. This should pose quite a quandry in the boardrooms of Lilly, Merck and the other pharmaceuticals: afterall a large portion of their obscene profits is a direct result of the prevelance of stupidity, but then again you would have these enormous, perhaps record breaking profits if you were the first to find the Stupid Virus, then develope, patent and secure the monopoly on it, and market it!

My, my boggles the mind contemplating cured neo-cons, pacifist muslims, benign baptists and independent Republicans!

[protagonia]

It's clear that humans can be programmed. Maybe we can be reset, like a computer. Just hold the button down a few more seconds and wait for the tone. When the desktop comes up, a window will ask you if you want to keep or delete certain programs. Just click on the ones that are ignorant and hateful and delete. Everything should start up normally again.

[baylaw73]

Just wipe the "religion" folder. Huge start.

[yellowdogSC]

At one point in the fairly recent past, a statement was issued by the FBI (I believe) that claimed America's GREATEST terrorist risk was from INTERNAL environmental terrorists! Strangely, they were unnamed.

Yeah. Right. Although, in very practical, logical theory, any location near trees or plants, or even grass (yard variety) or animals (places such as YARDS or HOMES, or with BIRDS or PETS) would, by definition, be fairly safe from such so-called “terrorist” actions.

(Or at least MANY TIMES safer than same locations would be from typical "suicide" bombers, those that do not value “environmental” resources more than freedom or life itself. Get it?)

I'm sorry, I mistakenly used the term "logic", and it clearly has no place in this discussion. (Or, frankly, in almost ANY discussion of terrorism since 9/11.)

Thank you. I briefly lost my head (I let it fill with “thoughts”, and an idea or two.)

Maybe I got a little “high” with feelings of intellectual superiority.

[tcagle]

This war won't work either, for the same reason: fraternizing with the enemy.

[flanardiente]

The War on (Anything) just benefits the (Anything). Who knew that when we declared War on Poverty, the middle class would soon join them? The declaration of War on Crime would give us violent urban gangs, the Russian Mafia and Enron. The War on Drugs, in addition to the old standbys--pot, acid, speed, heroin and cocaine--soon had to contend with crack, ketamine, PCP, ecstasy, a profusion of low-grade meth labs, mutant marijuana with a potency approaching LSD, the Colombian and Mexican cartels and the bumper crop of post-Taliban opium from Afghanistan. Needless to say, the War on Terror has been the best recruiting pitch EVER for terrorists all over the world. The reason's simple enough: all wars cost money, huge amounts of it, and those who fight such wars get to administer it, and who in their right mind would, say, stomp out the opium trade if by so doing, they put themselves out of business? It happened once before, at the end of Prohibition. It's no doubt just a coincidence, but not long after that came "Reefer Madness" and illegalization of marijuana.

Too bad we couldn't, maybe, fund a "War on Peace."

[FlowerGirl]

Thank you, flan. As for the stupid phrase "war on Terror", every time I hear it I want to sede a mouth stuffed with something awful. Or ever awfuller. Using a stupid phrase like that promotes stupidity (which may be why Bush, the owned and operated media, the Neoconmen, etc.) like it so much.

[Soulsurfer]

It is indeed sad, funny, ironic, and pathetic that our government is using agents and resources to hunt down, arrest, prosecute, and jail (alleged) cannabis users and growers. Here in California, where we voted to legalize marijuana for medical use, the feds continually and systematically arrest and prosecute people for trying to cope with debilitating illnesses. Meanwhile, millions get hooked on legal sleep enhancers or pain attenuators, and the guvmint doesn't care, as long as the campaign donations pour in. Shit, I can't believe I got drawn into this old dispute, now I'll be investigated.

[indypete]

If not by the DEA, then by O'Brien and the thought police! Where's Oldpotsmuggler? He usually has some words of wisdom on this subject.

[babylonandon]

I got to admit, fascist Christian Right-wing fanatic that I proudly am, I do not understand why we do not legalize pot. We need to manage and tax it in the same manner as alcohol.

Pot is not the gateway drug. Statistically cigarettes are, but statistics are lies. There is enough evidence to show the good of pot for some folks and that alcohol has far worse effects. This continued battle against it is a waste.

I support legalizing it for the same reason that I want us to be energy independent: it gets our money out of the hands of bad people. Drug dealers, Saudis, Chavez. All douche bags who are a pox on the world and who need to be bankrupted and ground into pig feed.