Jun 6, 2005
An exhibit on display at the Detroit Science Center was created by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and has been shown in several museums around the country. It supposedly focuses on the harm drugs do in the community and to the body. In fact, under this cover, the exhibit is nothing but a slimy piece of patriotic propaganda – filled with evasions and outright lies.
The exhibit, titled "Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists, and You," is a justification for every recent U.S. war. It paints everyone the U.S. wants to attack with the brush of drugs and terrorism, then shows disturbing pictures of neighborhoods and children destroyed by drugs – as if these foreign governments and organizations were directly attacking people here.
In a section titled "September 11, 2001," it rehashes the events of that day, while showing graphic pictures of the rubble of the World Trade Center and children's toys and clothing pulled from that rubble. What this has to do with drugs is only vaguely suggested.
In a section on "narco-terrorism," it mentions some gangs that "may have" gotten some of their money from drug trafficking: the Shining Path in Peru, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and, of course, Al Qaeda.
But the exhibit carefully ignores other gangs that definitely did make money off drugs – like the "Contras," whom the U.S. used against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua; or the Afghanistan warlords now allied with the U.S. government, who make lots of money from opium. Afghanistan now supplies over 75% of the world's heroin.
And it especially ignores the biggest "narcoterrorists" of all – the CIA itself, which dealt heroin in the 1960s and cocaine in the 1980s to finance its terror operations in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
The exhibit mentions damage done to neighborhoods in Detroit – but it doesn't mention the role played by the Detroit police in protecting the drug traffic after the rebellion in 1967.
In short, it blames U.S. enemies for drug trafficking, while ignoring the central role the U.S. itself has played in destroying our neighborhoods with this garbage. It justifies U.S. attacks on people all over the world, by putting across the idea that they're defending us from drug traffickers and terrorists. What a crock of bull!