An ancient crop, a modern addiction, and the machines of war

Colombia’s Coca Survives U.S. Plan to Uproot It

A $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia’s coca crop has left the availability of cocaine on U.S. streets unchanged.

US Continues Assistance to Colombia Aerial Drug Interdiction

Washington -- President Bush has authorized the US Department of State to continue assistance to Colombia... in carrying out an Airbridge Denial (ABD) Program...

WHY WE FIGHT

The new film by Eugene Jarecki which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a “who’s who” of military and beltway insiders. Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, WHY WE FIGHT launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire.

I had forgotten that Eisenhower coined the term "military industrial complex" in warning us against its impact on all of society "economically, politically, even spiritually" -- the clip of his farewell speech on the film's website is chiling. Right now I'm finishing War is a force that gives us meaning, an equally chilling book by war correspondent Chris Hedges:

I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I injested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers -- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state -- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths.