Michael Scott Moore's online journal
|
|
| Radio Free Mike Michael Scott Moore's online journal |
|
|
Thursday, November 07, 2002 Trading heroin for weapons... is nothing new in the Middle East. Instapundit links to a Fox News piece about al Qaeda's heroin-for-weapons ring in San Diego, and also raps our attorney general for trying to braid the war on terror in with the war on drugs. Drugs and terror are of course related. But the war on drugs not just a massive failure but also a front for the easy flow of narcotics around the world. This book review points out, in the last long paragraph, that the CIA's point man in Pakistan during the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- who supported the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets -- was running opium from the Helmand Valley. A chapter in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's book Whiteout tells the same story. Drug money is how covert operations stay alive. A sane drug policy in the U.S. would therefore dry up a lot of terrorist funding; but after this week's big Republican sweep we aren't likely to get any sane talk about drugs. posted by Mike Moore | 11:18 AMTuesday, November 05, 2002 Regime change?Salman Rushdie makes "a liberal argument for regime change" in Baghdad, and CounterRevolutionary treats it as some kind of anomaly.I have my agreements and disagreements with both Rushdie and CounterRevolutionary, but just to clarify: A liberal argument for toppling Saddam is what you get at Radio Free Mike. We're not "conservative" around here. We're liberal in the classical sense, and just because we think toppling Saddam is a good idea doesn't mean we trust President Bush and his people to do it well. They might, but we're skeptical. Republicans have a laughable track record with wars in the American Interest, from Nixon (who made a Democratic disaster in Vietnam even worse) to Reagan in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, to Bush Sr. in Panama, right up to the nasty contradictions of the first Gulf War. From September 11 on we took it for granted at Radio Free Mike that American liberals could support action against Saddam while being clear-headed about their own leadership, and we didn't need to wait all this time for Mr. Rushdie to clue us in. posted by Mike Moore | 12:11 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
