by Michael Parenti

Among the hypocritical crusades fabricated by U.S. leaders is the "war on drugs." On Pacifica Radio (October 31, 1990), a spokesperson from Americas Watch described how the United States was giving funds to military and paramilitary groups in Colombia ostensibly to fight drug trafficking. Instead, these forces were devoting their efforts to torturing and killing members of the legal Left, those working for social reform and peaceful electoral challenge. The Americas Watch representative concluded that "unfortunately" U.S. policy "is in error." In its "haste" to fight the war on drugs, Washington was "giving money to the wrong people."

Actually, the administration was giving money to the people who were putting it exactly to the use Washington desired. Like so many policy critics, the Americas Watch spokesperson assumed that U.S. leaders were misguided when in fact they were misguiding us. As in Colombia, so in Peru: under the guise of fighting the drug traffic, U.S. forces and funds have been used to train and equip Peruvian troops, who have been put to merciless use not against drug dealers but against political insurgents.

Likewise, the White House would have us believe that the purpose of the 1989 invasion of Panama was to apprehend President Manuel Noriega, because he had dealt in drugs and was therefore in violation of U.S. laws. Here Washington operated under the remarkable principle that its domestic laws had jurisdiction over what the heads of foreign nations did in their own countries. Were that rule to work both ways, a U.S. president could be seized and transported to an Islamic country to be punished for failing to observe its laws.

U.S. forces did more than go after Noriega. They bombed and forcibly evacuated working class neighborhoods in Panama City that were pro-Noriega strongholds. They arrested thousands of officials, political activists, and journalists, and purged the labor unions and universities of anyone of leftist orientation. They installed a government headed by rich compradors, such as President Guillermo Endara, who were linked to companies, banks, and individuals deeply involved in drug operations and the laundering of drug money.

The amount of narcotics that came through Panama represented but a small portion of the total flow into the United States. The real problem with Panama was that it was a populist nationalist government. The Panamanian Defense Force was a left-oriented military. General Omar Torrijos, Noriega's predecessor who was killed in a mysterious plane explosion that many blame on the CIA, initiated a number of egalitarian social programs. The Torrijos government also negotiated a Canal treaty that was not to the liking of U.S. rightwingers. And Panama maintained friendly relations with Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua. Noriega had preserved most of Torrijos' reforms.

After the U.S. invasion, unemployment in Panama soared; the public sector was cut drastically; and pension rights and other work benefits were abolished. Today Panama is once more a client-state nation, in the iron embrace of the U.S. global corporate system with a desperately impoverished population willing to work harder for less.

Which Side Are You On, Boys?

The U.S. national security state has done nothing to stop the international drug trade and much to assist it. Some people quip that "CIA" stands for "Capitalism's International Army." Others say it stands for "Cocaine Import Agency." In Laos in the early 1960s, the agency lived up to both names. The CIA's biggest asset in recruiting the Meo tribes into an army to fight against the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist Pathet Lao was its ability to transport the Meo's big cash crop of opium out of remote villages onto major markets via Air America, a CIA-operated airline.

When this story became public, the CIA admitted knowing that the Meo were transporting opium on Air America and claimed it had tried to stop them from doing it, but, well, it wasn't easy. In fact, CIA pilots subsequently reported they were under orders from their superiors not to interfere with the shipments. Opium production by CIA-backed warlords in Southeast Asia increased tenfold soon after the CIA moved in.

In 1988, witnesses before Senator Kerry's Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations gave evidence of a massive drug operation in which CIA and other government personnel were involved, along with top executive and military leaders of a number of Latin American countries. CIA operatives were using the funds accumulated from cocaine trafficking to subsidize counterrevolutionary armies throughout the region and in some cases were lining their own pockets.

A former intelligence aide to Noriega, Jose Blandon, told the Kerry Committee that the Costa Rican airstrips used for arms deliveries to the Nicaraguan contras also carried cocaine shipments to the USA. An official investigative committee in Costa Rica brought charges against John Hull, an American rancher who was linked to the CIA and the drug trade. Costa Rican authorities requested (unsuccessfully) that Hull be extradited, charging that he had been involved in murder and in smuggling arms and drugs in their country. Complicit with him, they named Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Rob Owen, former legislative assistant to then Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana. Hull was also implicated in criminal fraud, obstruction of justice, and trafficking in this country, yet the Justice Department took no action against him. Nor was he extradited to Costa Rica. (Both the Kerry committee report and Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's final report on Iran-contra contain critical evidence establishing North's links to drug trafficking. Instead of sitting in prison, North ended up running for the U.S. Senate.)

The Costa Rican indictment against Hull and the charges against North received almost no attention in the mainstream media, just a few ho hum lines on an inside page of the New York Times. If a progressive leader like Jesse Jackson had been linked to the Sandinistas in narcotics and arms trade, it would have played as a major story for weeks on end. If the war against drugs is being lost, it is because the national security state is on the side of the traffickers.

Drugs as a Weapon of Social Control

Besides financing wars and lining pockets, narcotics are useful as an instrument of social control. As drugs became more plentiful in the United States, consumption increased dramatically. Demand may create supply, but supply also creates demand. The first condition for consumption is availability, getting the product before the public in plentiful amounts. Forty years ago, inner-city communities were just as impoverished as they are now, but they were not consuming drugs at the present level because narcotics were not pouring into them in such abundance and at such accessible prices as today.

Those who want to legalize marijuana should specify "marijuana" instead of using the general term "drugs," because to many people drugs means crack, ice, PCBs, heroin and other hard stuff that has taken a serious toll on their communities.

A successful international war on drugs would not be impossible if the United States made a concerted effort, and if it got countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia to be as tough on their drug traffickers as they are on their peasants, students, and workers who struggle for social betterment.

U.S. policy is less concerned with fighting a war against drugs than in using drugs and drug traffickers in the war for social control at home and abroad. Like the ex-Nazis who proved useful in the war against communism, the drug traffickers (some of whom are linked to fascist organizations) are on the side of the CIA. "For the CIA to target international drug networks," write Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall in Cocaine Politics (1991), "it would have to dismantle prime sources of intelligence, political leverage, and indirect financing for its Third World operations." This would be nothing less than "a total change of institutional direction."

While talking big about fighting drugs, President Reagan cut one-third of the federal law enforcement funds for fighting organized crime. The Drug Enforcement Agency was reduced 12 percent, causing the dismissal of 434 DEA employees, including 211 agents. The Coast Guard was downsized, resulting in less coastal surveillance of illicit traffic. The U.S. Attorney's staff was cut drastically, creating a shortage of lawyers and causing the Justice Department to drop 60 percent of its drug and crime cases. All this moved crime investigator Dan Moldea to describe the Reagan drug policy as "a fraud." And Congressman Tom Lewis complained, "We're just arresting ponies, the little people. Why aren't we getting the big guys?"...