4 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, Aug. 2, 2004
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Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the
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necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.
NIAMH SLEVIN SUHAEL MOMIN
Editor in Chief Editorial Page Editor
Strong yetwongon drugs
SAM SINGER TARE TTwo
0
2001, at a0
drug rehabili-
tation center in Vien-
na, Virginia, President
George W Bush deli-
cately briefed an
engaged crowd of
recovering drug
addicts and health
workers on the tenants of the U.S. drug
enforcement policy. Citing the critical role
that treatment facilities and educational
campaigns play in the Administration's
anti-drug efforts, the President explained,
"But the best ways to affect supply is to
reduce demand for drugs. The best way to
impact supply of drugs coming into Amer-
ica is to convince our fellow citizens not to
use drugs in the first place."
Oddly enough, no more than two
months earlier, the President added $550
million to a military aid package called
"Plan Colombia," one of the most hope-
less and negligent extensions of the Amer-
ican "war on drugs" in the policy's history.
Plan Colombia is a symptom of the gov-
ernment's misguided focus on disrupting
the supply side of the illicit narcotics trade
- the same supply side that President
Bush downplayed to the enthused specta-
tors in the Virginia rehab center.
The $2 billion aid bundle equips and
trains the Colombian military in exchange
for its unyielding cooperation with U.S.
efforts to eradicate the nation's clandestine
cocaine industry. On a daily basis Army
Green Berets can be seen instructing
nascent Colombian counterinsurgency bat-
talions while overhead, U.S. licensed
Apaches fly cover for pesticide-laden
spray planes. These planes blanket sus-
pected areas of coca production with a
highly concentrated formula of Roundup,
a common household weed killer. Being
that they are dispensed relatively indis-
criminately, these potent herbicides often
chance upon plots of legal crops, rural
farming villages and natural ecological
zones. As a result, the U.S.-backed Colom-
bian military has dealt itself the country's
worst humanitarian crisis of the century, as
food and water supplies are poisoned,
farming villages wiped out and thousands
upon thousands displaced.
U.S. organized aerial spraying opera-
tions are mostly confined to the south,
where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, a leftist rebel organization, con-
trol much of the territory. Whether inad-
vertently or intentionally, by aiding the
Uribe Administration and rightwing para-
military groups in their effort to crush
FARC guerrillas, Plan Colombia has made
the United States a major player in the four
decade long Colombian civil war. And as
one may deduce, the earsplitting cry of a
U.S.-branded Hellfire missile hardly
serves to pacify the FARC rebellion. To
the contrary, U.S. military presence has
roused anti-imperialist sentiments - only
further augmenting the rank and file of the
violent insurgency.
After more than three years in exis-
tence, the strategy has proven disastrous.
Not only has the policy failed to curtail
cocaine production, but it has continued at
the cost of Colombia's fragile jungle
ecosystems and U.S. credibility in the
Andes region. But most significantly, Plan
Colombia demonstrates a disturbing conti-
nuity in the U.S's execution of the war on
drugs, as anti-narcotic czars and their con-
servative counterparts at home insist on
broadening the multi-billion dollar crusade
to halt the proliferation of narcotics at their
source -the foreign manufacturer.
Fighting the supply-side of a drug war
is like squeezing a balloon - outside
pressure will always have a displacing
effect, never a popping one. As long as
production premiums for illicit narcotics
remain at their astronomical rates, the
incentive to manufacture them will subsist.
Supply responds to demand, not the other
way around. None of this is news to the
Drug Enforcement Agency. U.S. led
cocaine interdiction campaigns in Bolivia
and Peru in the '80s simply transferred the
market to Colombia. And when Escobar
and his Medellin cartel were bulldozed in
the early '90s, narcotrafficking didn't
decline, it was simply decentralized. Like-
wise, Plan Colombia, despite having razed
thousands of square acres of coca crops,
has had minimal success in altering the
street value of cocaine in the United States
and Europe. These patterns don't suggest a
drug enforcement problem - they sug-
gest an economic problem. As long as
demand in the Western developed nations
continues to soar, policies like Plan *
Colombia will remain exercises in futility.
In speaking on behalf of the deluded audi-
ence at the drug rehabilitation center in
Vienna, Va., I must say, "Mr. President, put
your money where your mouth is."
Singercan be reached at
singers@umich.edu.
European graffiti
BONNIE KELLMAN A B NiT DGE
6
Eeryday on my
way to c lass
ere in Sala-
manca, Spain, I pass
through a question-
able-looking alleyway.
The apartment build-
ing on the right
always looks half-
deserted, and the
walkway is littered with trash. As in any
city back home, though, what really makes
the alley threatening is the original artwork
sprayed on the walls of the apartment
building. Unlike its American counterpart,
however, Spanish graffiti has strong politi-
cal undertones. Instead of one gang trying
to intimidate its rivals with a not-quite-
impressive collection of swear words, the
people who are responsible for the graffiti
in Spain are trying to achieve definite
socio-political objectives. "Toda victoria
militar es una derrota social" (All military
victories are social defeats), one writer
proclaims. Not only that, but they encour-
age their readers to become responsible
citizens by exercising their right to vote.
"No les votos botales" (Don't throw your
votes away), one says. "Tus votos - ellos
deciden" (Your votes - they decide).
Granted, Salamanca is a university
town, and therefore likely to be more intel-
lectual and politically aware than the aver-
age Spanish city. Still, I've noticed
political graffiti in several other European
countries, such as France and Italy. It says
something about the political awareness of
a country when even the rebellious youth,
traditionally the most apathetic segment of
society back in the United States, has
strong political views.
And if there's one thing Europeans
feel strongly about, it's Americans.
Although I still don't know enough
Spanish to have complex political
debates with the locals, I have had
some interesting conversations with
other English speakers. One night in
particular stands out in my mind. While
I was having dinner in Madrid's Plaza
Mayor with a few other University stu-
dents, two Englishmen spontaneously
decided to join us on the pretext that
our conversation was more interesting
than theirs. They then proceeded to
give us a long and detailed explanation
on exactly why America (and Ameri-
cans in general) totally suck. Their
complaints were the usual ones. Like
most Europeans, they spent a good
amount of time criticizing America's
involvement in Iraq. Their most inter-
esting claims, however, concerned the
characteristics of the average Ameri-
can, who they said to be selfish, misin-
formed and ignorant about the world.
Despite the Englishmen's generaliza-
tions and simplifications, it was hard to
argue with them. There is something
inherently self-centered about Americans'
apathy concerning the rest of the world.
Coverage of foreign events has always
been scarce in American media. Accord-
ing to Towson University, 80 percent of
United States citizens don't own a pass-
port, much less travel abroad. Further-
more, despite only comprising 5 percent of
the global population, Americans still
manage to consume 30 percent of the
world's natural resources (Oracle's
ThinkQuest). Even in the University's
study abroad program, a group supposedly
dedicated to learning about and appreciat-
ing a new culture, the students gleefully
called the United States "the best country
in the world" when they gathered in the
Plaza Mayor on the Fourth of July.
Politics and social issues just aren't
something that keeps many Americans up
late at night, inspiring them to deface pub-
lic property with spray-painted expres-
sions oftheir passion. Although places like
Ann Arbor might be the exception, I doubt
I'll ever find much political graffiti in the
United States. After all, living in America,
an ocean away from all the other countries
in the world besides Canada and Mexico,
it's easy to began to think that we're the
only ones out there, that our country is all
there isto the world.
During that night in Madrid, howev-
er, I felt differently. Suddenly, it was so
obvious that we are not alone. Surpris-
ing enough, we're sharing this planet
with so many other people. There's
nothing like traveling to make you actu-
ally care about history and politics, the
stories of our home.
Kellman can be reached at
bonkell@umich.edu.