SOLDIER: WOMAN FIGHTING WAR ON DRUGS

Last week's observations of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks on America will be remembered by Toni Henderson, a disabled former
nurse who has recently embarked on her own private war against the drug
dealers who terrorize her East Greensboro neighborhood.

For several weeks, Henderson, 53, has been walking up to drug dealers and
giving them an easy-to-understand notice. Her message and mission, on a
white piece of paper, read modestly and unpretentiously: "Crack selling
will not be tolerated in this community."

On Thursday, the day after most of the memorial programs, her home was set
on fire. According to her story, carried by The Associated Press, police
believe that the fire - which caused about $1,000 damage - was set on
purpose, "likely by angry drug dealers."

The scorched deck of her home means as much to her as the now sacred ground
in Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed last September. No doubt,
Henderson rushed to fortify and protect the bedroom where her sick mother
lay, just as the armed forces did when the Pentagon was hit by that
hijacked jetliner.

When her smoke detector blared, awakening her last Thursday morning, I am
sure that she felt no less terrified than did her fellow citizens who were
trapped, helplessly, when the alarms went off in the World Trade Center
last year.

Last week, President Bush vowed to ratchet up the war against global
terrorism, saying again, that no matter the cost or how long it takes,
"America will hunt them down and bring them to justice, one by one." In her
neighborhood war, Henderson, apparently, has decided to conduct her own
hunt, no matter the peril.

She has vowed to stop the gunfire and the eerie late-night screaming she
regularly hears, and to end the frequent sight of women selling their
bodies in exchange for crack cocaine. She said: "There are certain things
you risk your life for. I'd gotten to the point where I'd rather die than
keep this up."

To Henderson - and countless others like her across America - the toughs
and thugs in her community are as big a threat as the Taliban. Relatively
speaking, the drug dealers on America's streets are more dangerous than
al-Quaida, since, for starters, no known religion drives their motives.
It's all about money, sought primarily by people who have no means to earn
a living in the above-ground economy.

The untold billions of dollars made in drug deals in America partly
finances the type of terrorism we're hearing mostly about these days. A
little more than 20 years ago, President Reagan started a War on Drugs.
That effort hasn't turned out to be a good scuffle.

What the so-called War on Drugs did do - especially to those targeted in
neighborhoods such as Henderson's - was fill up America's prisons and
correctional centers. That a recent study, "Cellblocks or Classrooms,"
reported that there are an estimated 791,000 young black men in
correctional institutions - compared to 603,000 in higher education
institutions - may not mean a thing to Henderson. But, it should mean, no
matter what we tell ourselves, that just putting these more or less
nonviolent "criminals" in jail - mostly those who use drugs, not the
big-time dealers - is just part of the answer.

But, there she is out there fighting her own private war against those
terrorizing her neighborhood. While she's out there, according to the
study, "for the cost of incarcerating one person, a state could pay the
annual tuition of five students in a public university."

I hope we don't wage the war against global terrorism the way we've fought
the war on drugs. I hope some of Henderson's neighbors will join her. Maybe
a few of them will remember and act on that old saying: "All it takes for
bad people to take over is for good people to do nothing."

Maybe some of Henderson's fellow citizens will sound the brave call of Todd
Beamer, one of those celebrated heroes aboard Flight 93 last September.
Beamer took on those terrorists while crying out, "Let's roll!"

Taliban terrorists. Drug dealers. Same thing, by any name. Roll on! Toni
Henderson, and Godspeed.

. Turner is a free-lance writer and work-force consultant on employee and
community relations.