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Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by ptaipale on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @04:33AM (#13069484)
The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight. It's a figure of speech.

The war on terror is so-so.

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by humanrebar on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @08:21AM (#13070406)
> The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight.

There are a lot of decapitations and mass graves for something that isn't a war. If the people fighting aren't soldiers, what are they?

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by ptaipale on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @08:50AM (#13070605)
Criminals.

(By the way, soldiers generally don't decapitate enemies these days; doing so is a war crime.)

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by natermer on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @03:32PM (#13074428)
Carrying out and enforcing immoral laws makes you as much of a criminal as anybody.

The police state doesn't carry out showy public executions like the cartels do, but they have ruined many people's lives for no good reason and they have put plenty of otherwise innocent people in a grave.

And guess what? The American people pay for both sides. They pay for the cartels and they pay for the police state.

If the war on drugs never existed there wouldn't be any cartels in the first place. It's pure idiocy compounded with greed and profiteering on other people's misery.

You can't have the one of the highest percentage of the population in prison and call yourself a free country. It's bold faced contradiction. The USA beats out Turkmenistan FFS.

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by humanrebar on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:30AM (#13070969)
Fair point. Though calling those actions war crimes strengthens the point that there is actually a drug war going on.
Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by ptaipale on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:07AM (#13071306)
When drug lords decapitate people, I don't call it a war crime. Just crime.

If soldiers wage war and then decapitate people (like Daesh does) then that's a war crime.

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by qznc on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @04:54AM (#13069547)
> The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight

Debatable. The police men / DEA involved probably feel like soldiers sometimes. The drug lords and governments in south america certainly have soldiers involved.

Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by eponeponepon on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @05:27AM (#13069666)
They're being trained to think of themselves as soldiers. This will inevitably lead to them being soldiers, and that eventually ends in bog-standard straightforward war, indistinguishable from any waged by "real" soldiers.
Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by tracker1 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @11:19AM (#13071933)
Most soldiers throughout history were not career soldiers or warriors. Most are people brought into the conflict without any intent to be a soldier before whatever brought them in.
Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by lostboys67 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @08:46AM (#13070576)
paintball weekend warriors probably think that to but real soldiers consider them "walts"
Re:War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) by pjc50 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @08:33AM (#13070476)
It certainly is in Mexico.