FRONTIER SCIENCE/SOCIAL CHANGE

by Paul Von Ward

"When War Is Not War"

"War on Terrorism." "War on Drugs." "War on Cancer." "War on Poverty." What do they all have in common? More than you might imagine.

They were all started by U.S. Presidents whose reputations or place in history were questionable.

The war on drugs was nationalized through the Marijuana Act in 1937 under Franklin Roosevelt whose domestic policies had not succeeded in bringing America our of its economic depression (World War II would accomplish that). It grew under subsequent administrations, receiving more funding and power.

Ronald Reagan centralized it with a "drug czar" while his reputation suffered from the Iran-Contra Affair. (Such new czar-like positions have been invented in all the wars described here.) That debacle linked the sale of U.S. missiles to Iran for timing the hostages release to favor his election. Proceeds from the sale illegally funded the Contras in Nicaragua, who, perhaps not paradoxically, reportedly used money from drug-running allegedly known to U.S. authorities.

The war on poverty was launched by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 when he felt the need to prove himself after Kennedy's assassination and in the midst of a growing Vietnam conflict. Is a pattern emerging? Announcing a war diverts attention from other perceived failings.

The war on cancer was launched by Richard Nixon in 1971 while still in the unpopular war in Vietnam he had promised to stop. Nixon also intensified the war on drugs in 1971, labeling it "America's Public Enemy Number One". If you're really in bad trouble, you rally the public for two wars simultaneously.

The war on terrorism was launched by George W. Bush in 2001 who suffered from the absence of a compelling national or international agenda and from lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his Presidency. When in trouble domestically, you foment trouble abroad, even invading an unrelated country.

All four of these "wars" were rubber-stamped by an unquestioning Congress that failed to submit the Presidential proposals to the reality tests of a real public debate. Members of Congress failed in their obligation to their constituencies to seek and take into account the best available evidence about both the alleged problem and the most likely ways to solve it before passing legislation. They also did a poor job of analizing history and predicting possible unintended consequences of their actions.

The results have been disastrous. All four wars are failing, with the challenge each was supposed to conquer actually getting more out of control. The centerpiece of one, the invasion of Iraq, is now considered by 16 intelligence agencies to be increasing the global threat of terrorism rather than reducing it.

In all these so-called wars, elites have benefitted financially, politically, and personally from the waging of war, while untold numbers of little people were disenfranchized, disadvantaged, wounded or killed. And none of them has an end in sight.

The war on drugs has expanded the prison industry. America now has more than two million inmates, the largest such population on Earth. More than one-half million people were arrested for marijuana possession last year, the problem the 1937 law was supposed to solve. Fighting this "war" absorbs 400,000 police jobs, while serious crimes today are 480% higher than 1965.

Conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. pointed out that the price of this war (between $50-100 billion per year) is many times greater than what a public licensing of drugs for addicts and an effective education program would cost. The result is more drug abusers and drug busters, richer smugglers and middle men, fattened police and military budgets, and a more violent society.

There were 35 million poor in America in 1965 and there are still 35 million poor today. The U.S. has the most unequal rich-poor ratio of any wealthy democracy in the world, wider than 30 years ago. Twenty years ago CEOs made 40 times as much as the average employee. Today they make 400 times as much. Medicare, one of the largest components of the war on proverty, may be bankrupt by 2020 and it future costs will suck up any new tax revenues.

The 3 and 1/2-decade war on cancer still can't pinpoint the causes of cancer. We have been able only to conclude that beyond some genetic predispositions, cancers are caused by variables in diet and life-style. Cancer is still the second leading cause of death, expected to be first by 2010. The medical industry seized on Nixon's initiative to seek funding for expensive technologies and treatments. It has been enriched by $200 billiion per year. The slight extensions of longevity for some cancer survivors have been based on extended struggles with side-effects, the metastasizing of cancer, and sky-rocketing medical costs.

The latest official National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism, alluded to above, concludes that the unrelated invasion of Iraq has metastasized into new self-generating groups of terrorists. By creating victims of violence each month equal to those of the 9/11 attacks, U.S. policies breed recruits with grievances that fuel fanatical opposition to America. The $300 billion-plus official cost of the war is multiplied several times over in the domestic lives of Afghanistan, Iraq, other nations in the Middle East, our allies, and in most of American.

As in the wars on drugs, poverty and cancer, the war on terrorism has enriched many businesses and individuals in related professional fields, created more powerful bureaucratic centers, reduced the individual's control and responsibility for his or own own well-being and denied the humanity in its victims. It has created more grievances by those experimented on by people who want to try out ideas about security, democracy, and religion on others. In all these wars, it's the little guy who always get treated, arrested, attacked, or even killed. The powerful arrogate to themselves even more power and resources. As they make the problems worse, they audaciously ask for even more power and resources.

In a nation quick to require life-shaping grades of its third-graders, we need to grade the performance of such national wars. I would give the war on drugs an F, the war on poverty a D, the war on cancer a D+, and the war on terror an F-. Such grades call into question the seriousness of the current political debate. It's like shifting the proverbial deck chairs as the Titanic was heading into the ice-berg filled ocean. Now is the time, before it's too late, to introduce basic questions about our national purpose and future into the political campaign.

Copyright 2006
Paul Von Ward
All Rights Reserved