War is diplomacy by other means

So, the United States is no longer calling their “War on (some) drug (users)” a war.  That’s fine and dandy, but as Michael Marizco hints at in this article from The [Mexico City] News, changing the name doesn’t mean the end of the “war”… it’s just means off-shoring the problem and doesn’t come creeping back:

Federal authorities in the United States are calling for an end to the bogged down thinking behind the War on Drugs.

It’s an ambitious idea with many immediate benefits, except that where the government wants to spend its anti-drug money these days suggests the Feds aren’t so much intent on ending the war on drugs as they are on moving the battlefield a little south.
…

The newly confirmed head of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy told The Wall Street Journal that the phrase only served as a barrier to dealing with the profound challenges behind substance abuse and addiction.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a `war on drugs’ or a `war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
…

But what grabbed my attention was the last sentence of his carefully chosen words; seems as clear a qualifier as any I’ve ever read.

Apparently, we’re no longer at war with people “in this country.” Other countries have become an entirely different matter altogether.

Take a look at Page 3 of a U.S. Congress Appropriations Committee summary of its 2009 Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pandemic Flu.

The Feds would like to spend $470 million by supporting the Mexican government’s “war against organized crime and drug trafficking.”

The motivator is to stem violence along the Mexican frontier, a fantasy that the U.S. Congress seems fixated on, inspiring images of grenade attacks in El Paso and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán landing at San Francisco International with an escort of renegade FBI agents before he’s whisked off in an armored Suburban to the Bohemian Grove.

Most of the money would go toward arming the Mexican government with three Black Hawk helicopters as well as X-ray machines for inspection points and more anti-corruption training because Mexico hasn’t had enough of that.

Not part of the budget but equally interesting is the United States’ new usage of satellite spying technology to monitor the border. Recently, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, revealed that it has been tracking drug loads coming into the country.

However, it has stayed away from monitoring the U.S. side of the border and instead keeps an eye on the Mexican side. It’s a little schizophrenic how much effort goes into comforting one populace at the expense of another.

…

Everyone has been cheering the “end” of the “war on drugs” but that doesn’t mean any end at all… all that is going on is an attempt to shift the downside of a dirty industry south of the border. Sticking Mexico with the social and political problems — the erosion of human rights, the appalling death toll (not as high as the death toll caused by the drug usage in the United States by any means… but here, it’s wholesale slaughter as opposed to retail mayhem), the political and social costs associated with corruption, the breakdown of rural services — is a lot like claiming one’s stopped taking toxic waste… only to export it to someone else.

In a twisted way, this is about protecting the U.S. job market … more business for the arms manufacturers, “police trainers” and high-tech surveillance suppliers… not to mention the “incarceration/industrial complex” (which can easily shift to “rehabilitation” without losing its “customer base”) and does nothing to change the situation.

Or, the Canadian market…

The 40-day blockade of the Trinidad mine in the Oaxacan community of San José del Progreso came to a sudden and violent halt on May 6. Mine representatives and municipal authorities called in a 700-strong police force that stormed into the community in anti-riot gear along with an arsenal of tear gas, dogs, assault rifles, and a helicopter.

The overwhelming show of force was in response to community residents’ demand that the Canadian company Fortuna Silver Mines immediately pack its bags and leave. The company is in the exploration phase of developing the Trinidad mine. The result was a brutal attack, with over 20 arrests and illegal searches of homes. Police seemed to be going after a heavily armed drug cartel, not a community protest.

This is one of the drug war’s dirty secrets: As Mexican security budgets inflate with U.S. aid – to combat the rising power of drug trafficking and organized crime – rights groups say these funds are increasingly being used to protect the interests of multinational corporations. According to a national network of human rights organizations known as the Red TDT, security forces are engaged in systematic repression of activists opposed to megaprojects financed by foreign firms such as Fortuna Silver Mines.

In Oaxaca and throughout southern Mexico these types of conflicts seem destined to increase. Defying the logic of the international financial crisis, Mexico remains the top destination in Latin America for foreign direct investment, particularly in extractive industries. In the last three years alone, multinational companies have received over 80 federal mining concessions in just Oaxaca, covering 1.5 million acres of land. Mining is only the tip of the iceberg: Other megaprojects include hydroelectric dam construction, tourism and infrastructure, energy generation projects, water privatization, and oil exploration.

Changing the rhetoric of the so-called war on drugs does nothing to change the demand from the wealthy countries for the resources of the less wealthy… nor lessen the violence the wealthy are willing to tolerate for control of resources… whether legal or otherwise.

When poor Mexican farmers show up in the United States after being driven off their land by other consumer demands from the north, it’s blamed on the Mexicans. Maybe Chapo showing up in the U.S. with some renegade FBI agents would be the best thing that could happen. Perhaps the consumer culture SHOULD deal with its own industrial (and human) waste products.