Deborah Peterson Small, Alternet -The Vietnam War was not winnable, in much the same way as the war on drugs is not winnable. As President Lyndon Baines Johnson admitted to an aide in 1965, “there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam." Yet he couldn't admit mistakes in judgment or defeat in battle, so he and his administration engaged in a campaign of deliberate public deception. As noted in the Burns/Novick documentary, the CIA broke down the motivation behind the government's continued involvement in Vietnam: 70 percent to avoid humiliation; 20 percent to contain communism; 10 percent to help Vietnamese. I estimate much the same could be said about the federal government's motivation to retain what are admittedly disastrous drug policies, even with respect to marijuana: 70 percent to avoid humiliation (can't admit they were wrong); 20 percent to reduce drug-related crime; 10 percent to help people struggling with addiction.
The most striking parallel between the two wars is the disastrous results of the adoption of the wrong set of metrics for success. As noted by one of the Vietnam War commentators: "when you can't count what's important, you make what you can count important." In Vietnam, the principal metric was body count–how many of the enemy were killed and/or wounded in any given action, with the goal of reaching what was termed the "crossover point" where the number killed was higher than the enemy's ability to replace them. In the drug war the primary metrics are arrests and/or drugs seized, motivating police to make every arrestee a drug user and/or seller and incentivizing them to rack up large numbers of arrests by targeting vulnerable people indiscriminately or by misrepresentation–aka "juking the numbers" of arrests. In the theater of war–especially guerrilla warfare–soldiers are taught that anyone can be an enemy–any age or gender. Consequently, in Vietnam everyone was suspect until proved otherwise. Failure to assist in the search for the enemy made you the enemy, much the same way that drug conspiracy laws work today. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and cousins were routinely arrested, tortured and sometimes killed as co-conspirators in a war they just wanted to avoid. The routine destruction of entire villages and the livelihood derived within was considered collateral damage of the war, much the same way we view as collateral damage police looting under the guise of "civil asset forfeiture laws" and denial of basic civil rights–including the right to employment–to persons convicted of drug offenses. Today entire families may find themselves targeted by prosecutors who've been instructed by this administration to aggressively use drug conspiracy laws to win convictions and impose maximum terms of imprisonment.
The intense focus on increasing the body count and/or "kill ratio," led some soldiers to engage in atrocities and wanton acts of violence that cast a shadow on all U.S. military personnel in much the same way that the money and violence endemic with the drug trade has provided cover for bad police to hide corruption and shelter brutality against the people they're charged with protecting. In both cases, the lack of accountability for such behavior led to widespread community disdain and distrust.
Finally, the parallels in the government's response to dissent are alarming. The anti-war movement grew out of the civil rights movement. Many of the students that had traveled south to participate in the civil rights struggle began to see the relationship between racial justice and pacifism–opposing unjust wars. Many civil rights activists also understood that the cost of the ongoing Vietnam conflict threatened to undermine the government's ability to wage the domestic "war on poverty." As opposition to the war grew, the anti-war movement was increasingly demonized along with the press. LBJ claimed journalist Morley Safer had ‘defaced the American flag and given support to the enemy” when he reported accurately what was happening with the war. Safer’s interviews with soldiers revealed their routine dehumanization of the Vietnamese people similar to the dehumanization of black men, women, and children we've witnessed by some current members of law enforcement. Johnson referred to Safer’s employer–CBS–as the Communist Broadcasting System–sound familiar?
... Ultimately, history has shown the anti-war protesters to be on the right side of the argument. There was a point where the movement shifted from one protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam to a movement committed to ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. I wonder if we've reached that point in the movement against the 'war on drugs'. Are we committed to more than protesting what's wrong with the drug war–pointing out all the harm it is doing to individuals and communities? Are we committed to ending drug prohibition? If so, what does that movement look like? What are its tactics and measures of success? More importantly, like those who fought to end the Vietnam War–what price are we willing to pay to win?
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