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The Drug War: An Old Mission for the Pentagon

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As the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the Pentagon was desperately in search of a mission. Given the demise of the Soviet Union, which had been the excuse for an ever-growing military-industrial complex for decades, the talk of a “peace dividend” was in the air. “What do we need all that military spending for if the communist threat is now nonexistent?” people were asking. Wait a minute, cried the Pentagon. We can still find something to do. Just don’t cut our budget. Among the things they proposed was to help wage the “war on drugs.” Of course, that was long before U.S. foreign policy produced the terrorist blowback that resulted in the “war on terrorism” and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the decreasing enthusiasm for the perpetual war on terrorism and the 6-year and 7-year occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan among the American people, the ...

Embargoes Infringe on Our Freedom

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U.S. presidents spend a lot of time obsessing over whether they should talk to foreign regimes that are not-so-friendly to the U.S. government. The issue usually arises in the context of U.S. restrictions on trade that have been imposed on foreign countries with the aim of forcing their governments to comply with U.S. dictates. Actually, however, there is no valid reason for the president to talk to any foreign leader. Instead, the U.S. government should simply lift all sanctions, embargoes, and restrictions on trade on all foreign regimes and do so unilaterally, without discussions, negotiations, and concessions. Consider, for example, Cuba. For 50 years, the Cuban people have suffered from a cruel and brutal economic vise in which they’ve been squeezed by Castro’s socialism and the U.S. embargo. The aim of the embargo has always been regime change. The idea has been to make the Cuban people suffer ...

A New Official Enemy along the Border

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Soon after the Pentagon lost its longtime Official Enemy — The Communists — with the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the talk about a “peace dividend” caused Pentagon officials to go into overdrive developing reasons as to why the military budget should not be slashed. Among the things the Pentagon offered to do was to help wage the war on drugs. Of course, that was before The Terrorists had replaced The Communists as the new Official Enemy. That all changed after more than a decade of intensive U.S. intervention in the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf War, the deadly sanctions against the Iraqi people, the U.S. statement that the deaths of half-a million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the deadly no-fly zones over Iraq, the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, and the continuation of unconditional military and financial aid to ...