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On Thursday, October 1, 2009, the Subcommittee held an oversight hearing entitled, “Transnational Drug Enterprises: Threats to Global Stability and U.S. National Security from Southwest Asia, Latin America, and West Africa.” This hearing, the first in a series, explored the global trade in narcotics as a transnational issue and examined the relationship between drugs, failed and weak states, and related threats to U.S. national security. The hearing featured witnesses with expertise in counternarcotics operations, regional drug traffic patterns, and drug trade as a driver of conflict.
Witness List:
•Eric Olson, Senior Advisor, Security Initiative, Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars;
•David Mansfield, University Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the Kennedy School at Harvard University;
•Douglas Farah, Senior Fellow, International Assessment and Strategy Center and former West Africa Bureau Chief of the Washington Post; and
•Vanda Felbab-Brown, Ph. D., Foreign Policy Fellow, Brookings Institute and Adjunct Professor, Security Studies Program, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.
To view a webcast of the hearing, please click on the link below:
Click Here
Documents and Links
* Testimony of Mr. Eric L. Olson (61 KB)
* Testimony of Mr. David Mansfield (78 KB)
* Testimony of Mr. Douglas Farah (246 KB)
* Testimony of Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown (48 KB)
* Written Statement of General Barry McCaffrey (Ret.) (73 KB)
The Long Night is Coming
5 years ago
I felt obliged to read all these documents carefully.
ReplyDeleteI have so many criticisms that I resorted to sarcasm in my full-length treatment of the topic, entitled "Five Consultants Drink the Drug War Kool-Aid."
Without sarcasm, I can say that these speakers give every indication of having been blinded by institutional prejudices. I fear that they cannot deliver the shocking paradigm shifts that the USA would require to save itself from its self-destructive actions.
You can find my lengthier, snarkier, screed at:
http://very-yellow-very-violent.blogspot.com/2009/10/five-consultants-drink-drug-war-kool.html
It's not as entertaining as Fred Reed's deconstruction of the same five pieces would have been, but hey, I'm not a professional writer.
Oh, yes, here's the one non-sarcastic bit from my essay:
ReplyDeleteSTATEMENT OF VANDA FELBAB-BROWN :
'Although the political capital such belligerents obtain is frequently thin, it is nonetheless sufficient to motivate the local population to withhold intelligence on the belligerent group from the government if the government attempts to suppress the illicit economy. Accurate and actionable human intelligence is vital for success in counterterrorist and counterinsurgency efforts as well as law enforcement efforts against crime groups. '
This interests me because I often am concerned with how to get normal people to question their assumptions and taboos. Political capital is clearly sufficient to shape cultural assumptions and taboos. Imagine a peasant child. The child is too naive to understand discretion. Thus his parents might protect information from disclosure by telling the child that the drug barons who meet the parents are superheroes, like Spiderman or Wolverine. If the child were to tell police, such statements would be misinterpreted as childish fantasy. Teenagers would be fed "Robin Hood" style cultural assumptions concerning the drug lords. Adults might abandon fantasy and instead rationalize their actions with irrefutable ideological assumptions (e.g. Communism with ethnic characteristics). The process would gain its own momentum - this is probably how Robin Hood became a "good guy" fictional character - it was in the interests of local communities to glamorize real-life bandits.