Bush & Bennett

In a piece posted by Alternet titled “Bush’s New Plan Puts the Drug War on Autopilot,” Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, points out: “While the Bush strategy increased the budget for treatment programs by $121 million, it also cut prevention spending by $147.5 million. Law enforcement continued its consistent growth—a 10 percent funding increase—and the Andean Regional Initiative, an effort to fight drug production at its source, will receive a $106 million increase.” 

According to a report in the Washington Times, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress on March 12 that the DEA has obtained “multisource information” linking al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, to heroin trafficking. “The very sanctuary previously enjoyed by bin Laden was based on the existence of the Taliban’s drug state, whose economy was exceptionally dependent on opium,” Hutchinson said. 

The increased spending will no doubt be headed for faith-based drug treatment programs. Here the message is: addicts don’t just have a drug problem; they have a belief system problem. Getting them off drugs is only part of the solution—accepting Jesus into your life is the answer. Unemployment and homelessness aren’t the problem, it’s a lack of piety that’s holding you down. 

Beliefs of this nature have a core of strong supporters within the Administration. A recent column by Newhouse News Service reporter Mike O’Keefe confirmed that by pointing out that the Department of Health and Human Services “informed states in a February 26 directive that state welfare plans would have to include a strategy on how they will include faith-based organizations.” The most chilling aspect of the directive is the department is “encouraging states to consider church-trained counselors, not just counselors with psychological and medical credentials, when granting federal money to fight drug and alcohol abuse.” Elizabeth Seale- Scott, director of faith-based efforts at the department said, “We don’t want to present the same medical model over and over as if that’s the definitive measure.” 

“There’s little compassion in ‘compassionate coercion’ without a commitment to a massive investment in drug treatment programs,” said Gale Bataille, Mental Health Director of San Mateo County in California. “It sounds more like a public relations ploy that could pit neighbors against neighbors, obscuring the root causes of substance abuse.” 

For Joan Zweben, clinical psychologist, addiction treatment specialist and the head of a long- standing and respected drug-treatment program in Oakland, California, the president’s program sounds long on promises and short on its ability to deliver. “The most serious problem, from a substance abuse perspective, is that we have inadequate capacity now for providing decent services. If you add more people to the mix by incarcerating more people, that will only completely strain an already overburdened system,” she said. 

“While ‘compassionate coercion,’ often works in Drug Court situations, which is a more structured intervention, this initiative has the scary ring of McCarthyism to it,” she added. “Drug abuse should be viewed as primarily a public health problem. The criminal justice system has an important role, but should not be the first or main approach.” 

A Holy War Against Dissent 

Who needs an Office of Strategic Influence when you’ve got William Bennett and his newly formed Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT)? Bennett announced the founding of AVOT at the National Press Club in mid- March, saying its aims are to “take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing.” 

Bennett has a long resume that includes lots of time on the government payroll. The official bio posted at AVOT.org notes he is: co-director of Empower America and EMPOWER.org; former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities; former secretary of education, and former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Bennett co-chairs the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and he has written or edited 17 books. His current book is called Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism. 

Unmentioned in Bennett’s resume is the fact that although he supported the war in Vietnam, he apparently had the “moral clarity” not to serve in the military. 

When not on the government payroll, Bennett has been occupying a number of chairs at right-wing think tanks. At the AVOT launch, Bennett named names; individuals who have had the gall to question the president’s “war on terrorism.” 

Frank Gaffney is one of Bennett’s chief cohorts on this project, which is sponsored by Empower America. Gaffney is president of the ultra-right Center for Security Policy (CSP), which, writes Jim Lobe in Alternet, “has long led the inside-the-Beltway campaign for Star Wars.” Gaffney is also one of those guys who show up on the television talking head programs in times of war. He’s been a repeat guest on “Hardball,” CNBC’s nightly talkfest, hosted by Chris Matthews. 

In a recent “Hardball” appearance Gaffney defended what most people in the world think is indefensible, the Bush administration’s plans for the use of nuclear weapons. Gaffney called it a program set up by “adults” to look at all the available options. According to the Los Angeles Times’ Paul Richter, the plan calls for nuclear weapons to be used in three types of situations: “against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or ‘in the event of surprising military developments.’” 

Another key advisor is former CIA director, James Woolsey. Woolsey has been the number one television promoter of going to war with Iraq since the U.S. bombing campaign began. Lobe explains that Woolsey, as a member of the Pentagon’s defense Policy Board, was sent to Europe shortly after September 11 to “gather evidence linking Iraq” to the attacks. Lobe: “Woolsey is closely associated with a pro- Likud position on the Middle East and sits on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA), a hawkish pro-Likud group. On Tuesday, he told reporters he agreed with those who are ‘calling the war we’re in now World War IV’.” 

Other senior advisors include: William Barr, former U.S. Attorney General; Walid Phares, Middle East scholar, author and professor at Florida Atlantic University; Ruth Wisse, author, scholar and professor at Harvard University; and Lawrence Kadish, philanthropist and financial advisor. 

AVOT plans to hold teach-ins at a number of “America’s most prestigious colleges and universities” beginning in September 2002. 

In its $128,000 kick-off announcement that appeared in the New York Times “Week in Review” section on Sunday, March 10, 2002, AVOT warned that “While support for U.S. policies is at present very high, we believe that unless public opinion is reinforced, our national resolve will weaken over time.” This “resolve” is mainly threatened by internal critics, “who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of ‘blame America first’.” 

Bennett opened the press conference by warning that, “Professional and amateur critics of America are finding their voice.” He chastised former president Jimmy Carter for remarks he made that were critical of the president’s use of the term “axis of evil.” Bennett also named congressperson Maxine Waters, author of Prozac Nation Elizabeth Wurtzel, American Prospect columnist Robert Kuttner, and African American novelist John Edgar Wideman, among others, who are giving comfort to the enemies of democracy. 

Lobe reports that Bennett also singled out Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s Magazine. “In a recent editorial Lapham wrote suggestively about the elasticity of the word ‘terrorism’ and cited examples where Washington itself has used terrorist tactics during the 1990s, including the bombing of civilian targets in Baghdad and the Balkans.” 

In response to AVOT’s criticism, Lobe quotes Lapham calling Bennett a “wrong-headed jingo and an intolerant scold.” Lapham described AVOT’s comparison of the threat posed by al-Qaeda with those of fascism and communism as a “grotesque exaggeration.” The group, Lapham added, appears to be a new “front organization for the hard neo-con [neo- conservative] right.”               Z 

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering conservative movements.