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Editorial: More action needed in drug war

By David H. Hackworth

The most serious longterm enemy threatening America is the drug epidemic
that's destroying our future America's youth.

Drugs are infecting our kids in every big and small town in this land.
Sixteenyearold kids are hooking 12yearolds, and it ain't on Joe Camel.

Tens of billions of our tax dollars have been spent fighting drugs. A Coast
Guard chief says, We've lost the drug war. I've punched enough holes in the
ocean off Colombia and some Caribbean nations to know that what we're doing
is a big, expensive sham. Drugs on the street are cheaper and more
plentiful now than ever.''

Meanwhile, our military forces, charged with the mission of defending
America, are deployed in 100 countries around the globe, accomplishing
little except protecting the Pentagon's budget keeping the pork flowing
and the MilitaryIndustrialCongressional Complex glowing.

Our military is the one force that can win this battle. It has the
leadership and savvy to accomplish the mission. This force, including all
the spy agencies, costs the nation almost $300 billion a year to run. Yet
little of this money goes to fighting the drug business, which annually
nets more than $400 billion.

Imagine the results if this massive military machine were unleashed on the
drug barons' infrastructures, or if President Clinton informed Mexico,
Colombia and all other narco countries that the United States of America
had declared war on drugs.

Simultaneously, he could return every airman, Marine, soldier and sailor to
our continent, except those forces involved in missions of national
security, and commit them to attack the source of most of the drugs: Latin
America.

Then he could and should announce: [published in italics] Let the
leaders of those nations know we are no longer going to fight this war with
Just don't do it' antidrug doublespeak but with military power that will
go to the source of the drugs and take them out.

Let everyone know that the drug business is threatening our national
security, not unlike the Soviet missiles in Cuba did. And we are going to
close it down with the same national sense of purpose as we used to remove
those missiles, and with a total concentration of military power.

No place will be safe. Our forces will strike and eradicate growing,
processing, shipping, command and control modules and every narco leader's
lair. Everything of value will be confiscated or razed to the ground.
Sherman's march through Georgia will look like an environmental
savethetrees program in contrast to the devastation left in the wake of
our drug fighters.

Let all bankers in the world know that if they launder drug dollars,
they're out of business. And starting soon, every American bill over 20
bucks will be exchanged for new dollars. Anyone trying to swap a bag of old
green he can't justify earning will lose it on his way to jail.

We could start by deploying the Army along the 2,000mile border we share
with Mexico, with orders to interdict drug operations and conduct hot
pursuit missions into that country.

Our Marines and Special Operations warriors would be the raiding force that
would also train and supervise the foreign antidrug teams. The Air Force
and Navy would control the sky and sea, using every asset and hightech
gadget from satellites to spy planes to win this critical fight.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the current drug czar, who whipped Iraq in just four
days, is the right guy for the job. Just put him in charge of the whole
shebang, give him the military assets and get out of his way.

Constitutionalists will say my fantasy strategy is breaking the law; others
will say we're violating basic human rights. And supporters of Ezequiel
Hernandez an 18yearold goat herder who was accidentally killed by
Marines on a drug stakeout along the Texas border last May will rightly
argue that the military solution will result in more friendlyfire incidents.

Despite these valid objections, with drugs now zapping kids everywhere,
America hasn't a chance unless we make the elimination of the source of
drugs and its insidious apparatus our primary military objective.

Hackworth is a highly decorated retired Army colonel.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate.