Two Wars We Need to End

I was surprised, to put it mildly, when I saw The Chronicle's not-so-token Conservative columnist Debra Saunders write something last month calling for an end to "The War on Drugs." Something you think we would have learned during Prohibition. But it's nice to see folks coming around.

Since Nixon launched this so-called war 40 years ago, drug use is actually UP. Saunders rattled off 4 very good reasons to quit beating our collective heads against the wall on this useless and silly "war"

1) It encourages criminality: the DoJ reports that "mid-level and retail drug distribution in the U.S. was dominated by more than 900,000 criminally active gang members" representing more than 20,000 U.S. gangs

2) Institutional hypocrisy: It's well known that the last three Presidents used illegal drugs. A drug conviction probably would have prevented any of them from becoming President, yet all 3 were/are "drug warriors"

3) Deprived revenue: A Harvard economist estimated in '08 that legalizing drugs could save federal/state/local gov'ts $44 billion annually while taxing drugs could being in an additional $33 billion. But no, let's cut Medicare instead.

4) Limiting individual rights: This can best be summed up by a quote from Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore narcotics cop and Ex. Dir. of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: "President Obama needs to think about where he would be right now had he been caught with drugs as a young black man. It's probably not in the Oval Office, so why does he insist on ramping up a drug war that needlessly churns other young black men through the (broken) criminal justice system?"

It's time for Washington to LEAD public opinion on this issue - remember when real leaders did that?

The other stupid, useless war is, of course, in Afghanistan. I'm actually on the side of a Reverend on this one, who recently wrote in the Chron: "Some argue that our reasons for beginning this war were morally just. But after a decade of revenge, we rounded that corner long ago. Amid news of air strikes that kill children scavenging for kindling, midnight raids on homes that terrorize families in their sleep and support of a morally bankrupt government nearly as abhorrent to women's rights as the Taliban, we can no longer pretend that we are liberating Afghans. Our faith traditions teach us that every human being is a beloved child of God. This violence we continue to inflict on innocent civilians is immoral and disregards our most sacred precepts of the inherent worth and dignity of each human being."

I agree wholeheartedly with Rev. Schlosser and to quote him once more: "We can't afford this future, morally or financially. This path has cost us dearly. There's no official count for Afghan civilians killed by this war, but it's well into the thousands, many of them children. Others were breadwinners whose deaths plunged their families into poverty. Some were beloved community leaders with whole villages depending on them."

Amen!