Tag: NIxon

A 50 Year Dismal Failure

It all began on June 1971…..Nixon’s War on Drugs.

The beginning of this failure was not what you think….was drugs the true enemy?

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

https://drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war

Yes it has been a dismal failure…..if the true reason for such a “war” was to stop the flow of drugs….and the American people agree….

The findings released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) showed that 83% of Americans say the “war on drugs” has failed. That assessment is felt similarly across party lines; 83% of Democrats expressed that view, as did 85% of Independents and 82% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) said it’s time to end the war on drugs.

The poll also found that 66% of voters support getting rid of “criminal penalties for drug possession and reinvesting drug enforcement resources into treatment and addiction services.”

Similar percentages were seen in support for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes (64%) and for commuting or reducing the sentences of people incarcerated for drugs (61%).

A further finding was that 63% think drug use should be addressed as a public health issue compared to just 33% say it should be addressed as a criminal justice issue.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/09/poll-shows-83-americans-believe-so-called-war-drugs-abject-failure

A decade ago, 2011, a commission found that the ‘war on drugs’ was a failure and yet it continues and even expands….and the drugs continue to flow in….

The global war on drugs is a failure and should be replaced by decriminalization strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights, according to a recent report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. “Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use,” says the report.

…

As an alternative, the Commission – which includes activists, business leaders, former American cabinet officials, and former European and Latin American presidents — points to a number of countries that have decriminalized drugs without seeing a significant rise in use or drug related-violence. Portugal saw declines in heroin use, new HIV infections, and the incarceration rate once it coupled the decriminalization of all drugs with treatment policies. Similar drops in problematic drug use, especially heroin, were observed in both Switzerland and the Netherlands after adopting polices that emphasized treatment rather than criminalization.

https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/the-war-on-drugs-has-failed-commission-says/#

After billions upon billions upon billions wasted trying to prevent that we are fighting drugs has accomplished only one thing…..the incarceration of many people for minor offenses….

And the drugs flow on!

The one situation that we can thank the War on Drugs is the militarization of our police forces….

The war on drugs has impacted a myriad of domestic institutions within the United States. Nowhere is this more apparent than in analyzing the evolution of U.S. domestic policing.

Historically, laws within the United States have attempted to separate the functions of domestic police from those of the military. Police are to protect the rights of citizens — both the victims and perpetrators of crime — and are to use violence only as a last resort. The military, by contrast, is trained for war, to engage and destroy enemies. While events throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century opened the door that separated police and military, the war on drugs blew that door off its hinges.

More traditional wars, like World War II, have a clearly defined external enemy. The war on drugs is different. While the United States engages external enemies as a part of its drug interdiction policies, it also targets domestic “enemies”—drug users, dealers, manufactures, and everyone involved in the illicit drug trade. These domestic adversaries are not readily identifiable.

Militarized Police: A Consequence of the War on Drugs

Time for the admin to grow a set of nuts and face up to this failure and look to the real problems and stop pretending that we are winning an unwinnable war….time to stop wasting much needed funds on a failed policy.

And the drugs flow on!

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Making America (History) Great Again–Part 31

As the calls for the impeachment of an American president…..Maj. Danny Sjursen takes a look at the dark days around the Nixon re-election years…….

Maj. Sjursen has a unique way of looking into the soul of American history….his series should be taught…if not in high school then in college…..his perspective is similar to the writings of Howard Zinn, another historian with a great look at our history,,,the good and the bad……

Before we go to Part 31….I want to help my readers able to read all the Parts of this series…..

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10;Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15; Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20; Part 21; Part 22; Part 23; Part 24; Part 25; Part 26; Part 27; Part 28; Part 29; Part 30.

This Part of the series looks at the “Dark Lecacy Of The Nixon Years”…..

He was corrupt. He was petty, angry and resentful. He was also one of the most astute politicians in the annals of the American presidency. Time after time he overcame obstacles and defeats to rise again. His genius, ultimately, was this: He envisioned a new coalition and knew how to channel white resentment over the civil rights and antiwar movements into political triumph. This was his gift, and his legacy. Americans today inhabit the partisan universe that Richard Milhous Nixon crafted. Republican leaders to this very day speak Nixon’s language and employ Nixon’s tactics of fear and anger to win massive white majorities in election upon election. Indeed, though Nixon eventually resigned in disgrace before he could be impeached, the last half-century has been rather kind to the Republican Party. Only three Democrats have been elected president in that period, and Republicans have reigned over the White House for a majority of the post-Nixon era.

For all that, Nixon remains an enigma. Though he crafted a lasting conservative majority among American voters, he also supported popular environmental and social welfare causes. He secretly bombed Laos and Cambodia and orchestrated a right-wing coup in Chile but also reached out to the Soviets and Chinese in a bold attempt to lessen Cold War tensions and achieve detente. A product of conflict, Nixon operated in the gray areas of life. Though the antiwar activists, establishment liberals and African-Americans generally hated him, Nixon won two presidential elections, cruising to victory for a second term. He was popular, far more so than many would like to admit. Although the 1960s began as a time of prosperity and hope, they produced a president who operated from and exploited anxiety and fear, and in doing so found millions of supporters. Nixon was representative of the dark side of American politics, and no one tapped into the darkness as deftly as he did. The key to his success was his ability to rally what he called the “silent majority” of frustrated Northern whites (most of whom traditionally were Democrats) and angry Southern whites (in what came to be known as his “Southern strategy”). It was cynical, and it worked.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-nixons-dark-legacy/
 
As an old fart that remembers these days all too well…..appreciate the observations from this historian…..all Americans need to remember or at least learn about those dark days of the American presidency….so that it cannot happen again……(too late!)……

Rice Invokes Nixon

Condoleezza Rice did something recently that few Republicans seem willing to do…she invoked the memory of Nixon.

Asked whether waterboarding is torture, Rice replied, “The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

Many readers will recall that Nixon had a similar response when asked about Watergate, and told the reporter David Frost, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Rice also insisted that she did not authorize waterboarding: “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did.”

Maybe she should have spent a few semesters studying law.  Or better yet, just keep her mouth shut.  Does she realize that she has admitted to conspiracy?