Drugs & US Law Enforcement (2006-2017)

[carl]

Anyone else notice how similar our approach to Insurgency and/or terrorism is to our approach to drugs?

I think your eight step program (plus Slap's step zero) very well describes our 100 year war on drugs. It is a strain though to apply it to our small wars abroad.

Those small wars involve motivations like political ideology, religious zealotry, megalomania and interference by mischief making, malicious nation states. Drugs are a matter of people wanting to get high or get rich. That makes a very great difference.

Commander Reyes in the SWJ blog Plan Mexico post makes some recommendations, such as lightnening up on marijuana in Mexico, that will not be popular with American drug warriors. Does anyone know how widespread that opinion is in Mexico especially amongst the police and military? If Mexico were to reduce or eliminate the criminal penalties associated with marijuana, boy would that stimulate the bidding at imperial headquarters.

[bourbon]

Those small wars involve motivations like political ideology, religious zealotry, megalomania and interference by mischief making, malicious nation states. Drugs are a matter of people wanting to get high or get rich. That makes a very great difference.

As it applies to BW’s comparison, I believe the demand for drugs is analogous to the population’s willingness to support or tolerate the insurgency/ terrorist group.

Greed and desire to do drugs are motives just like political ideology, religious zealotry, or megalomania.

So if this were the SAT’s: the supply of drugs (to include dealers) is to the demand for drugs as the insurgency/terrorist group is to the population’s willingness to support or tolerate the insurgency/ terrorist group.

[Bob's World]

My point is that insurgents don't cause insurgency, governments do.

The government creates the "demand", or what I call "conditions of insurgency" among the populace they govern when they fall short in a few critical, fundamental ways that Dr. Maslow identified long ago. When they cut the populace out of the loop in terms of granting them the right and authority to govern (become illegitimate in the eyes of the governed); when they apply the rule of law in a manner the populace perceives as unjust; when they formalize inequalities that treat certain segments of the populace worse than others as a matter of some status (race, religion, neighborhood, etc); and when they deny the populace trusted, legal, and certain means to make changes in government when necessary. This is DEMAND. it is Poor Governance. It is the Conditions of Insurgency.

Where there is Demand, there will be supply. Some leader will come along, and he will employ some ideology that speaks to the target audience, and he will create an insurgent organization to challenge the government. That is SUPPLY.

What does the Government do? It holds itself shameless and blameless, ignores the tremendous demand they are creating and the reasonably easy changes they could make that would quickly diminish demand; and instead they blame Supply, and they Attack Supply.

Now, supply must be dealt with, but only as a supporting effort to taking on Demand. Supply side economics do not work!

The U.S. Civil rights movement response (our nation's second greatest COIN effort) targeted Demand and passed and enforced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

(For those wondering what number one is, no, not Iraq. Number one was coming together in the summer of 1787 to scrap the articles of confederation and produce the Constitution. That is one genius bit of COIN there.)

The recent success in Sri Lanka? Pure Supply-side. Demand is probably greater than ever, and a new supplier WILL step up. It is as inevitable as the turning of the tide.

We will never be good at COIN until we slap ourselves on the forehead and realize that Insurgents don't cause Insurgency, Governments do.

Similarly, Mr. Bin Laden is also in the Supply business. If one wants to find Demand they must go to U.S. Foreign Policy. If we want to defeat terrorism against the U.S. we must definitely manage the supply, but we must make that secondary to targeting Demand. Our current Supply side approach is quite arguably making Demand greater than ever, and that should scare people. What happens when AQ is defeated, but Demand is still there? The next group to come along may likely be way smarter and way more dangerous to our way of life than the current suppliers.

No, our war on Terror is way more like our war on Drugs than most realize.

[slapout9]

We will never be good at COIN until we slap ourselves on the forehead and realize that Insurgents don't cause Insurgency, Governments do.

Exactly,and Governments do that by acting Immorally, by operating against the greater interest of the people that creates a gap for the insurgent to enter through.