|
Jim
Webb Reviews:
THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM:
How Americans Are Seduced by War
BACK TO TOP
| |
|
Washington Post
Articles:
Don't Call on the Guard
1989
The National Guard is entering
what the Pentagon has euphemistically termed "the nationwide crusade against
drugs." Which is hardly going to cause either the billionaire kings of
crack or the minor moguls of the open-air markets to lose much sleep.
The new secretary of defense
and the new drug czar, who between them have exactly zero military or law
enforcement experience, are now implementing a supplemental appropriation
passed last year by a Congress that was acting more in frustration than
through strategic logic. And soon National Guard members will be conducting
secondary activities such as aerial photography, assistance in searches and
transportation and training of law enforcement personnel. The National
Guard, it is stressed, will not be involved in direct participation in such
matters as arrest and seizure.
Which means that there will
be dozens of photo opportunities, a few widely publicized successes and no
real movement toward a resolution of this "crusade." There still has been no
enunciation of a clear strategy in the war against drugs. We have seen
important but nonetheless symbolic gestures, such as the ban on importing
assault rifles. We have seen administration appointments to amorphously
defined positions such as deputies for "supply reduction" and "demand
reduction." We have been told, in the best tradition of former California
governor Jerry Brown, to lower our expectations, that we are never going to
fully solve the problem. We are being treated to quasi-capitalistic logic:
that the best we can hope for is the elevation of the street price of
illegal drugs by reducing their volume and purity.
What we haven't been told is
how we're going to fight and win a war that is killing off young people,
depriving others of their potential, creating serious birth defects in
newborns and pouring billions of dollars every year into the pockets of
criminals. In fact, we are experiencing a guerrilla war whose stakes are
dollars, power and the misery of the people they subdue.
National Guardsmen flying over the desert
or providing photo opportunities by riding shotgun in police cars are not
going to defeat the guerrillas in this war. Nor are deputies for "demand
reduction and supply reduction." If this nation is serious about ridding
itself of its most debilitating pestilence, I would suggest the following
approach.
 |
Go after the enemies sanctuaries:
No guerrilla campaign has ever been
defeated when the enemy was allowed to operate with impunity from
protected sanctuaries, and this principle is true in the drug war. Major
drug traffickers operating without fear in nearby countries must lose
this luxury. However, this does not mean, as some have suggested, that
American troops should be sent in, in what would end up as a naive,
fruitless jaunt through the wilderness. The sanctuaries in the case of
drugs are most often found in legal protections some countries give to
drug kings and their mammoth operations. On the one hand
assistance could perhaps be training domestic police, and on the other
by international agreements, particularly those that would allow
freezing, and ultimately confiscating, the bank accounts of known drug
kings. |
|
|
Get the drug soldiers off the battlefield:
The biggest problem in drug
enforcement is not locating drug dealers. It is that our jails are so
full and the criminal process so bogged down that the police can't keep
them off the streets. And even the prospect of jail is not a powerful
deterrent, since Lorton and similar facilities have become alternate
communities for those in the drug culture. |
Build a very large, very
primitive federal prison in a remote area of Alaska. Next to it build a
very large, very primitive juvenile detention center. Pass a law stating
that the sale -of drugs in any amount constitutes a federal offense,
punishable by a mandatory prison sentence in Alaska. Such a law would
"delocalize" a massive federal and international problem. Vigorously
enforce this law until the prospect of selling drugs literally sends chips
down the spine of anyone who considers it.
Those who believe this
approach is draconian and won't work should consider that Japan had
200,000 hard-core and 'latent' heroin addicts in 1960, before passing
similar provisions in the 1963 Narcotics Substance Control Act. Today
heroin addiction in Japan is as rare as smallpox. In the process, the
Japanese also dramatically cut back property crimes, which in large part
are the province of drug offenders.
-
Police the battlefield. Now focus on mere
drug use, and attempt to eliminate it. Educate the children, treat the
victims. Activate your deputies for "supply reduction" and "demand
reduction" go out and make speeches about the evils of drugs so that
future generations of young Americans will comprehend the miseries that
their predecessors endured. And you won't need National Guardsmen peering
out uneasily from police cars, wondering why they've been pulled away from
their jobs and families to become targets of abuse in neighborhoods that
desperately need something more than symbols from their government.
James Webb was an
Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan
Administration.
|
Back to Top
|
