WAR ON DRUGS: PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX PART 3 OF 4
THE WAR ON DRUGS
The "War on Drugs," launched by President Reagan in the mid-eighties, has been fought on interlocking international anddomestic fronts.
At the international level, the war on drugs has been both acynical cover-up of U.S. government involvement in the drugtrade, as well as justification for U.S. military interventionand control in the Third World.
Over the last 50 years, the primary goal of U.S. foreignpolicy (and the military industrial complex) has been to fightcommunism and protect corporate interests. To this end, the U.S.government has, with regularity, formed strategic alliances withdrug dealers throughout the world. At the conclusion of World WarII, the OSS (precursor to the CIA) allied itself with herointraders on the docks of Marseille in an effort to wrest poweraway from communist dock workers. During the Vietnam war, the CIAaided the heroin producing Hmong tribesmen in the Golden Trianglearea.
In return for cooperation with the U.S. government's waragainst the Vietcong and other national liberation forces, theCIA flew local heroin out of Southeast Asia and into America.It's no accident that heroin addiction in the U.S. roseexponentially in the 1960s.
Nor is it an accident that cocaine began to proliferate inthe United States during the 1980s. Central America is thestrategic halfway point for air travel between Colombia and theUnited States. The Contra War against Sandinista Nicaragua, aswell as the war against the national liberation forces in ElSalvador, was largely about control of this critical area. WhenCongress cut off support for the Contras, Oliver North andfriends found other ways to fund the Contra re-supply operations,in part through drug dealing. Planes loaded with arms for theContras took off from the southern United States, offloaded theirweapons on private landing strips in Honduras, then loaded it up with cocaine for the return trip.
