Why is the U.S. war on drugs in direct contradiction with its war on terrorism? That's what I would like to know. If you watch television you've probably seen the new anti-drug campaign. It shows drug users explaining how they \just wanted to have a good time,"" but unknowingly funded terrorists, who raise money through drug sales. One teenager even says, ""I helped kill a family in Colombia.""
If it were up to me, this new campaign would be aimed at our elected officials, and play in every capitol building, because the government is the one killing families in Colombia, not drug users. Before these commercials aired, the U.S. government gave $1.3 billion to the Colombian government as part of a drug-eradication project known as Plan Colombia. The United States funded a government with close ties with the AUC, a paramilitary group in Colombia; included in the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. Countless Colombians have been killed at paramilitary checkpoints, in direct view of military checkpoints just miles from the paramilitaries.
So, the U.S. government will purport to reduce terrorism by decreasing drug use which reduces funding to terrorists, while they could, by ending Plan Colombia, reduce funding by $1.3 billion. How dare the government feed us this propaganda, when there is a more clear and direct relationship between their money and terrorism, compared to the $50 a teenager spends on a sack of marijuana in Madison.
Now, President Bush would like to give more funding to a failing Plan Colombia, and this time with no human rights conditions, a lack of which will only incite more human rights violations against Colombians. It's time to start asking our elected representatives why they fund terrorism in Colombia, while combating it in the Middle East. They have asked us to stop contributing to terrorists, it's time we ask them the same.
