RHETORIC OF 'WAR'

Regarding the Times' editorial about the FBI's priorities shifting from
drugs to preventing terrorism (June 3), the drug-warrior police,
politicians, officials, media and civilians don't list victory as an
objective in their expensive and oppressive trillion-dollar war. When they
do spout their "zero tolerance/ total victory" rhetoric, how many people
actually believe them?

How many believe that this year's multibillion-dollar drug-war budget will
be the one that will achieve total victory after decades of billion-dollar
budgets have totally failed?

Remember that the drug czars' and warriors' jobs depend on the perpetual
prosecution of, but never a victory in, the drug war.

The politicians also rely on the drug war to sustain their constituent
industries and institutions that depend on the economics of prohibition to
make generous profits.

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to
keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

The drug war also promotes perpetuates racist enforcement policies and
diminishes many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to be inalienable
according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth

Fort Worth