DRUG WARS - FROM AFGHANISTAN TO BALTIMORE

In Baltimore, the murder toll hit 200 in mid-August, and is expected
to easily surpass 300 by the end of the year. Baltimore's murder rate
is slightly down from record highs 10 years ago, though, when the
city counted a murder a day. Since the mid 1980s, that puts the death
toll of Charm City's mean streets at around 6000- far more than that
of the 30 year civil war in Northern Ireland. Baltimore- and Newark,
Detroit, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington D.C., and so many
other impoverished urban centers-is the front line of a very real,
very bloody Drug War, with cocaine and heroin taking center stage.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the New York Times reports this week how
record levels of opium poppies are being harvested once again, which
is no small matter for a nation responsible for over 90% of worldwide
heroin supply. This is due in large part to the resurgence of the
Taliban, apparently, who are longstanding proponents of heroin
production. In Taliban-controlled provinces, heroin production has
more than doubled from only last year!

On the military front, this news is humiliating on two counts. On the
one hand, our forces cannot stifle a robust drug trade surging right
under its occupation. On the other hand, our technologically superior
army-the best equipped in the world, loaded with an embarrassment of
riches from the biggest defense industry on the planet-is rebuffed by
a scraggly 3rd world militia. The message this sends to our global
enemies regarding US military capabilities should rightfully trouble
the generals. And if our politicians had any spine, they would reform
our national defense spending, for clearly Lockheed Martin is not
providing what we need to succeed in either front of our War on
Terror- a lesson learned at tremendous cost to boot.

Politically, news of the Taliban's military and drug-related
successes evokes memories of WMDs and this administration's famous
argument for invading Iraq in 2003. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al
claimed that the regime of Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to
the safety and welfare of the American people. If that is the
standard for US invasions, surely the Taliban has merited that
designation for a very, very long time.

Our president pointed to shadowy missiles in the Iraqi desert, and
warned that they were directed our way. He claimed that Saddam
threatened our allies in the Middle East, and the oil reserves upon
which we desperately rely. None of these claims were immediately
convincing, and warranted serious work on the part of Colin Powell
and friends. For almost two decades, however, and continuing through
today, the Taliban has been at the root of very real blood spilt on
American streets.

There is no mystery or confusion surrounding the Taliban's link to
our urban drug war, and the American lives it costs. The Taliban
encourages heroin production, offers the industry government
protection, and arranges the export of this elicit substance. The
Taliban is in cahoots with global drug traders, sending the stuff on
its way to Baltimore's dealers and addicts. In short, the Taliban is
clearly a drug regime, responsible for sowing social mayhem worldwide.

On American shores, the murders of the drug trade are only its most
obvious mark of destruction. In truth, the social devastation it has
inflicted runs deep: lives ruined by heroin addiction, both
physically and psychologically; families ripped apart by resident
addicts; entire neighborhoods rendered unlivable by drug violence.
Baltimore knows countless children orphaned by addict parents, who,
thanks to familial and social instability, become destined for crime
- - or addiction, too. Vast tracts of the city are literally destroyed
by the drug war, with entire blocks standing vacant and decrepit, now
housing only addicts and rats. Baltimore has lost 200,000 residents
in the past two decades- a quarter of its population-due in large
part to the social ravages of drugs. There is no doubt about
it-unless you choose to ignore it: Baltimore is a war zone.

By these accounts, heroin starts to sound like a weapon of mass
destruction originating from a willful regime half a world away. And
yet, heroin was never seriously invoked in the rush to war in 2002.
We should wonder why. This is not to say that we should have waged
war with the Taliban on this pretense, for surely, our drug war
cannot be solved through military action only, if at all. This is to
say, however, that heroin eradication should have been a priority
once we invaded Afghanistan, at least tantamount to the capture of
Bin Laden. Instead, the national focus was quickly shifted to unclear
targets and objectives in Iraq-on the pretense of national security
concerns- while heroin and its trade openly kills Americans everyday.

If a national, social threat - with a considerable number of American
lives at stake-is enough to incur significant international action
and attention of the US government, then few threats have merited it
more than the Afghan heroin industry and the Taliban who supports it.
Iraq was never a clear danger; the poppy fields of the Helmand are
and were. A government that truly concerns itself with homeland
security in the most literal sense of the word must wage a
multi-pronged war on drugs, on the streets of Baltimore, Kabul and
Bogota alike. And a successful war waged on these fronts will look
less like a military campaign than a socioeconomic one, for, as is
well documented, entrenched poverty drives Afghanis and Colombians to
cultivate narcotics, and Americans to consume and deal them.

It is perennially remarkable how Americans ignore devastation that
goes on right under their noses, in Baltimore's ghettos, in Detroit,
Newark-in Washington, only blocks from the White House. Lives are
lost daily in gruesome fashion, and tens of thousands of others are
lost tediously and excruciatingly over time. But this urban massacre
has never been cause for military action of any kind (Does Colombia
count? I'm not sure.). Granted, this massacre is complex and messy -
but there is no doubt about its occurrence, or about the horrific
nature of its progress. It is simply the monster we Americans choose
to live with daily- and ignore-while challenging less known and less
clear dangers abroad. Bin Laden is a known danger, naturally, but
hardly better known than the heroin that kills hundreds of
Baltimoreans every year.

We have put a major American security threat on the back burner. This
naturally leads one to wonder why. The complexity and expense of
fighting drugs come to mind. But it is tempting to suppose that the
demographics of drug war casualties may be responsible, too. The vast
majority of Baltimore's street victims are poor and African American.
The urban black community disproportionately bears the brunt of the
drug war-this is an indisputable fact. When we choose to devote
trillions of dollars to a war in Iraq with no clear objective and
plan, and now we see for no clear reason, we essentially announce to
the African American community that we are sacrificing it-that it is
unworthy of our attention, though its multiple sufferings are apparent to all.

The conclusion, I believe, is clear. The next time we are tempted to
embark on international ventures in the interest of national
security, we must be honest about real sources of harm at work in our
homeland, before our very eyes. And more likely than not-though this
is politically unappealing, tedious and extremely challenging-it will
require that attention be paid domestically first and foremost.