Drugs ‘n terrorism: it’s all good
by digby
This is more or less already happening, but the Republicans are the first Party, I believe, to make it explicit. From the 2012 GOP Platform:
The war on drugs and the war on terror have become a single enterprise. We salute our allies in this fight, especially the people of Mexico and Colombia. We propose a unified effort on crime and terrorism to coordinate intelligence and enforcement among our regional allies, as well as military-to-military training and intelligence sharing with Mexico, whose people are bearing the brunt of the drug cartels’ savage assault.
Sadly, as I said, it’s already happening. The New York Times wrote about this last month:
The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of antidrug efforts in Central America, according to documents, Congressional testimony and interviews with a range of officials at the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Pentagon.
In both regions, American officials are responding to fears that crackdowns in more direct staging points for smuggling — like Mexico and Spain — have prompted traffickers to move into smaller and weakly governed states, further corrupting and destabilizing them.
The aggressive response by the United States is also a sign of how greater attention and resources have turned to efforts to fight drugs as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down.
“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” said Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the D.E.A.’s Europe, Asia and Africa section. “It’s a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up.”
That could have come right out of the RNC Platform.
Does any of this sound like a good idea to you? One’s imagination runs wild. After all, since 9/11 we have constructed a massive counter-terrorism apparatus, both at home and abroad. Imagine the implications of using it for the drug war.
When all this was happening over the last decade, there were a few of us asking what in the hell was going to keep the government from using its new police powers (and constitutional abuses) in the realm of ordinary criminal behavior. It would appear that the answer is nothing. They’re just doing it.
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