-Caveat Lector- from; http://www.hightimes.com/ht/new/9911/whosagain.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.hightimes.com/ht/new/9911/whosagain.html">HIGH TIMES - Who's Against The Us Drug War? Onl�</A> ----- Who's Against The Us Drug War? Only The Rest Of The World! FILED 11/12/99 Photos Courtesy Of Common Sense For Drug Policy/Lennice Wirth WASHINGTON, DC--Military and civilian "drug czars" from all over the Western Hemisphere convened here last week for a pep talk from US antidope generalissimo Barry McCaffrey of the White House, and got quite a bit more than they'd expected. Night of The Drug Generals: Stop the War NOW! First of all, there was the plainly-worded open letter denouncing Gen. McCaffrey's scorched-earth policies of hemispheric herbicide warfare and military subjugation of all Latin America's poor folk in the name of the US War on Drugs. Hand-delivered to each of the 37 delegates at the Organization of American States' special drug summit at the plush Omni-Shoreham Hotel, this elegant communication had to give each of these drug czars something special to think about. Among its signatories were sundry current and former Latin American political luminaries who might quite likely wind up running their respective countries' governments someday, given the stray democratic election or cabinet reshuffle or bloodless coup. Then there were the continual noisy political protests right out in front of the Omni-Shoreham, a vivid reminder that Gen. McCaffrey's iron grip on US foreign "drug-control" policy over the last three years is a matter of some controversy, and can actually be challenged right out there in the streets of the capital of this particular OAS democracy. Sweet Reason vs. Brass and Braid Among the open letter's signatories were Oscar Arias and Belisario Betancur, former presidents of Costa Rica and Colombia respectively, and both still highly influential in their governments and political parties. Violetta Chamorro, president of Nicaragua until last year, signed on to the protest against McCaffrey's hemispheric Drug War, as did Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel. (President Arias also has a Nobel Peace prize, by the way.) Very notable among the influential US political figures who signed on to this firmly-worded document of dissent was the former US Ambassador to El Salvador, the Hon. Robert White. Altogether, the collection of Latin American brass and braid assembled by McCaffrey for his pep talk were conspicuously outweighed by the caliber of the civilian opposition to his hemispheric Drug Warmongering. The Generalissimo Burns Up REAL Good! "As you meet to develop a hemispheric drug strategy," these 37 drug czars were notified, "it is time to admit that after two decades, the US war on drugs--both in Latin America and in the United States--is a failure. Despite a 17-fold increase in US drug-war spending since 1980, record seizures, arrests, and incarcerations at home, and destruction abroad of hundreds of drug labs and coca and poppy crops, today in the US illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and more easily available than two decades ago." The letter wound up with the rather grim warning, "Expanding the US drug war to other countries will merely further expand the failure of drug control throughout the hemisphere, while escalating killings and environmental destruction." Some Sinister Plot, Or What? There was less than no problem inducing intelligent international people to sign on to this document, says its primary organizer, Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy in Virginia. It was Zeese, largely, who last year got more than a hundred international luminaries, including Ronald Reagan's ex-Secretary of State, the Hon. George Schultz , to sign an even stiffer indictment of McCaffrey's Drug-War policies before a prestigious United Nations "global drug summit." (This much-ballyhooed UN drug summit just completely flopped as a direct result, leaving McCaffrey to growl about sinister "drug legalizers" with uncanny powers of persuasion, to get people like George Schultz to publicly agree with them, presumably by brainwashing or blackmail.) "The objective is to show that the Drug War position is the extreme position, not the normal one," says Zeese. "Focusing on signatures of former heads of state, some of the very men and women who signed the huge letter expressing disgust with the US and UN drug strategies that was delivered to the UN drug summit last year, and published in the NEW YORK TIMES, this most recent letter was delivered to everyone in attendance at the OAS summit last week, and to all their embassies." Hands Across The Waters The street demos at the Omni-Shoreham were largely the work of organizers from several Latin American political watchdog groups and human-rights outfits. Among the speakers were Cristina Espinel-Roberts of the Colombia Human Rights Committee, legislative coordinator Lisa Haugaard of the Latin-Ame rica Working Group, and the Rev. Roger Butts, chaplain of American University here. For academic input, the Harvard Student Association sent their president, Marilyn Hoosen, all the way from Massachusetts, and Students for a Sensible Drug Policy in DC were represented by Kris Lotlikar. And on November 3, in the First Amendment Lounge of the National Press Club, the highly influential Criminal Justice Policy Foundation held a formal press conference to decisively dispel any Drug War propaganda that might still be lingering in the OAS delegates' ears from Gen. McCaffrey's pep-talk harangues. 'Do Not Thou Also Do As I Have Done' There, CJDP president Eric Sterling recalled his long tenure in the 1980s as a chief counsel to the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, where he greatly helped to lay the legislative underpinnings being exploited now by Gen. McCaffrey in his "zero tolerance" offensives both globally and domestically. Sterling recalled how in 1983, the whole Judiciary undertook a much-publicized junket southward, in which he personally "traveled to five nations in South America accompanying a House Committee fact-finding mission." It was a historic, highly optimistic, headline-making junket--and yet since that time, "There has been no net progress in our international strategy," Sterling observed regretfully. As a pioneer in the original Ronald Reagan War on Drugs, Sterling heartfully invited each one of the OAS' delegates at the Shoreham: "Ask yourself how many generations of your nation will be sacrificed to a failed policy." At the same rather confessional press conference, the Commissioner of the US S entencing Commission between 1980 and 1988, Michael Gelacek, spoke of the Reagan Drug War's triumphs in stiffening mandatory-minimum prison penalties for International Narcotics Kingpins--which have wound up, under Gen. McCaffrey's reign, being applied to the likes of neighborhood crack dealers and California's medical-marijuana political activists. Observing that his mandatory minimums didn't perceptibly interfere with the importation of narcotics to the USA even when they were inflicted on their intended targets, Gelacek rather belatedly concluded, "The time has come for us to adopt a new strategy on drugs." Gelacek's shrivening was followed by eloquent addresses from Colletta Younger of the Washington Office on Latin America and the Rev. Barnard Keels of St. Mark's Methodist Church. Former El Salvador ambassador White spoke also, along with Martin Jelsma of the Center for International Policy. The People In Harm's Way The most poignant addresses at this press conference, though, were delivered by two peasant women from Bolivia, Leonida Zurita Vargas and Margarita Teran of the Coca Growers' Association in Cochabamba there. The US Drug War has been responsible for a generation now of herbicide spraying and well-documented military oppression throughout the traditional indigenous coca-chewing regions of the Andes, and these women spoke very eloquently and simply to its effects. Meanwhile, Barry McCaffrey's White House aides over in the Omni-Shoreham (where the OAS proceedings were initially kept secret, for some reason) may quite characteristically have been introducing braid-laden Andean police colonels to commercial representatives of huge American corporations like Monsanto, who export tons of their expensive commercial herbicides throughout South America every year, thanks to the White House's Of fice of National Drug Control Policy. This highly sensitive OAS drug-czar summit may also, rumoredly, have been haunted by plenty of contract-cutters for US companies which merchandise napalm and light artillery and super-spook communications technology. In any case, these happy North American small-arms industrialists are already feasting in anticipation of the $2 billion dollars which McCaffrey has pledged to shepherd through Congress this year, straight into the military budgets of all the big Andean countries, most conspicuously Colombia. There have been rumors that the White House itself--that is, all the parts not infested by the ONDCP--have been trying to hold this "antidrug" bonanza down to a plain old billion or so, at some risk of being smeared as "soft on drugs" by McCaffrey's personal odd bedfellows in the Republican Congressional opposition. It was hoped that maybe these street demonstrations against the OAS drug summit might put a little starch into the President's doublet for resisting McCaffrey's two-billion-dollar Drug War boondoggle. It certainly ought to have starched up the bosoms of the estimated 10 million people in Colombia (total population c. 40 million) who have been marching in the streets down there over the last couple of weeks, demanding an end NOW to their everlasting civil war. But since the Colombian military can confidently expect the lion's share of McCaffrey's $2 billion "drug war" package--and since US small-arms-manufacturing lobbyists also have a vested interest in unobstructed arms sales to all three or four sides in that Colombian conflict, BESIDES the official military--it's not surprising that these gargantuan Colombian peace demonstrations have attracted little more US media attention than the OAS drug-czar summit last week, or the political opposition to it. Preston Peet - Special to HT News NEWS Index NEWS Archive This material is copyrighted and may not be republished without permission of HIGH TIMES magazine. � 1999 Trans-High Corporation. 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