Which phony war is worse? The war on terror, or the war on drugs.

[Cant trust em]

Discuss.

I got this idea from DB1, who posted something similar earlier today, BTW.

[NanceGreggs]

1. As Jon Stewart said ...

... when Bush announced his War on Terror: "Hey, we've already declared war on drugs and war on poverty - and we got our asses kicked both times!

[bahrbearian]

11. When can we have a War and Wastefully spending?

Which includes both? McDudya , McDubya! can you hear me? can anyone hear me?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I cannot possibly choose...

They are equally bad in my book...

Both are abysmal failures...

And both have had ginormous amounts of money squandered on them!

:grr:

[Mojambo]

6. Not only failures, but have made the very situations in both cases much, much worse.

It's not like we're just not making progress on Terror/Drugs, we're going backward!

[AlCzervik]

3. Total fail on both, but a huge boondoggle for so many.

"War on (insert noun here)" only seems to put a lot of people and jail and make a shitload of money for corporations.

[ruby slippers]

8. Drug War Countdown Clock link.....

http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm

[AlCzervik]

9. jesus thats unreal! thanks for the link.

[ruby slippers]

10. Yeah, 600 dollars a second IS unreal, isn't it?

compared to the arrests and jail time....

[panader0]

4. Interesting question

Both have cost many lives and a huge amount of money. I still have to say the "war on terror" as that is an exported wae, and the war on drugs is our own national thing. Let's get out of other countries and then tend to our problems.

[eShirl]

16. the WOD does affect other countries, though not to the same extent

I'm thinking of Plan Colombia specifically
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia

[High Plains]

22. You might mention Mexico, too. About 5,000 dead in the drug wars

since Calderon took office. Mexico is taking heavy casualties in our drug war.

[riverdeep]

21. If only the war on (some) drugs was local.

It affects the government, and hence the people, of many other nations. From Afghanistan to Columbia, we have our hand in the suffering. Many governments in South America in the 80's were nothing more than fronts for drug cartels, and drug lords still play a huge role. Government officials that try to resist are mowed down, their families are mowed down. It's brutal. American demand and drug policy created these conditions.

Forcing spraying of crops is another condition we place on nations.

All the while the CIA uses these illegal drugs to fund it's truly illegal ugly black ops.

[EFerrari]

5. They're like the two hemispheres of the corporate brain.

One imprisons us and rips us off at home. The other kills us and rips us off abroad. Very efficient.

[ruby slippers]

7. I think the war on poverty is the worst.........

we are still fighting it from the 60's.....

[sam sarrha]

12. well, Afghanistan just produced the largest opium/heroin crop 4th yr in a row, enough to supply all

the junkies for 5 years, couple years still left over from last year, there are robberies all over our town murders every day.. woman 50 yards up the road OD'd yesterday.. this is a fairly up scale neighborhood, 2 blocks off Country Club rd, nobody is safe.. guy and wife junkies shot and killed the meals and wheels couple delivering food to the elderly apparently during a robbery, a couple blocks away.

no rehab available at all 2 yr waiting list

[Cant trust em]

18. God. That's terrible.

[JohnnyCougar]

13. You're comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges.

They are both very different and unique failures.

[Eric Condon]

14. I'm sure in some way we don't fully comprehend, they're actually the same war.

They're both rooted in the same bullshit - industrial complexes (prison, military), racism, ignorance, and the government's ability to manipulate the sheeple into believing that with enough determination, they can kill an invisible bogeyman.

You can't wage imaginary wars against intangible concepts. You CAN battle social ills like poverty, but you can no more declare war on terror than you can declare war on war. When warfare is carried out by armies, it's war, but when it's carried out by individual, non-institutional organizations, it's terrorism - it's about as simple as that.

[TexasObserver]

15. War on Drugs is worse

It has been used to imprison a million people and harass millions more.

It is used to justify every kind of governmental excess and violations of basic constitutional rights.

It is the basis of the tawdry private prison boondoggle.

It is the basis for disenfranchising millions of young black, hispanic and white males from voting.

It alienates the young, and makes tens of millions of them criminals for doing what is OK if done with a prescription, with alcohol, or with the right set of parents to bail them out.

The War on Terror encroaches on us wherever we are, and it is terrible. But it doesn't imprison a million people and terrorize daily millions more.

I think prescription drugs administered by doctor mandated treatments are a graver threat to society than all the illegal drugs. Tens of millions take anti depressants. Tens of millions take other drugs to modify the impact of anti depressants. Prescription drug reactions and hospital infections kill more people than all the illegal drugs, but the perception painted is much different.

I don't even drink, but I think the War on Drugs is really just a war on Americans who prefer certain ways of getting high over others, which others are more socially accepted ways of getting high. Cindy McCain can pop pills, and that's acceptable. Legal drugs illegally acquired and taken are not considered as bad as illegal drugs. Why? Because Big Pharm makes money off one but not the other.

The War on Drugs is a War on Americans - tens of millions of them, and a rationale for one segment of the political spectrum to abuse an opposing segment of the political spectrum.

[ellisonz]

17. Neither.

They're both great. Just thinking about it makes me wargasm:sarcasm:

[Xenotime]

19. War on Terra. Because it affects other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan

[LWolf]

20. The War on Terror.

But both need to end.

[riverdeep]

23. They're fundamentally related.

The war on drugs set us up in a very important way- mentally. After spending billions on the drug war, after watching our cities and towns getting worse, after the overflowing prison system, after all this, all objective measures indicated long ago that it isn't working. But we didn't stop. We just kept the blinders on, because of our inability to confront reality. Our inability to say "we were wrong". Because of cowardly politicians who didn't want to be seen as soft on crime or for moral decay. Because of our difficulty in seeing shades of gray. That we can let people decide for themselves even though some of them are going to make horrifically bad choices. Letting people decide for themselves is not condoning drug abuse. Instead, the Ministry of Information tells us the latest surge on drugs is working, we're just around the corner on this, besides, you're not for drugs are you? What kind of message would that send to the children?

The same thing with the war on terror. All objective measures, including those departments in this administration that haven't been co-opted like the GAO, indicate that it's not working. But do we stop? NO. You don't want the terrorists to win do you?

A fundamental blind spot to reality, coming from ideological sources, is responsible for both, and was implanted in our collective psyche by the War on (some) Drugs. This disconnect from reality may be our costliest burden yet.