The War We Should Be Fighting

This past July, my best friend came home from an eight-month stint in Iraq, training new recruits for the country's security force. He was able to see his family for about ten days before being shipped off again to finish out his tour. And there isn't a day that goes by without my anxiety level jumping when I hear about another car bomb being detonated in a public place. Tensions are high where my friend is stationed, and I long to get that email that he's back on U.S. soil with nary a scratch on him. I have four months until that happens...

In the meantime, I keep listening to the news and tolerating the ridiculous public "service" announcements from freedomwatch.org, as I turn my attention to the battle-front of a war that I've been fighting since I was ten-years-old. This one involves my family and has been both triumphant and tragic.

I've never quite understood the social habits of well-off people. Grown adults with two loving parents, top-notch education, good jobs, caring friends, etc. who still find it cute and fun to smoke a bowl or a pipe every once in a while. Some of these well-off people just so happen to be old friends of mine who know me and my history very well. I've always wanted to ask them if they knew they were slapping me in the face every time they got high right in front of me.

See, I'm a 25-year veteran of the modern drug war. As a middle-class child growing up in Chicago, I had made several physical stands against some of the most ruthless gangbangers in my old neighborhood. A neighborhood that waited until AFTER I moved to decide that it wanted to clean up the local, criminal element.

As I got older, I learned that the reason I was a favorite target of these jack-asses was because my father was one of the main cocaine suppliers of their rivals, so they figured they'd take it out on me the several times I walked home alone from school. This went on for about five years until I started high school and met my best friend currently in Iraq. Although I finally had good guys on MY side to play basketball with and watch my back, my father's grasp was way beyond my reach and I ended up losing him to fifteen years in prison on federal drug charges. Then, to heart-failure from a major stroke ten years after that, brought on by years of the party lifestyle he so preferred over his own family.

In the meantime, as my high-school friends looked out for me, I was able to graduate high school and attend college in relative peace, my sister married a wonderful man and they now have four children, my mother paid her dues as a 30-year pension, retired social worker for the city and last September, my wife and I received our first child.

I am very excited about my new son. However, I still find myself fighting for another life that I'm not so quick to relinquish. That life belongs to my brother, who is currently battling his own addiction... this time to crack. I am not so angry fighting this battle as I was with my Dad. This is a heart-breaking method of persuasion and understanding that cannot be won no matter how many of my brother's dealers I put in jail.

I'm fighting for the heart and mind of a soul so precious and dear to me that I honestly can't help but feel angry toward the recreational drug-user and their respective comrades. (Ex-hippies are the worst, by the way). "You gotta' express yourself Maannnn."

Go @&!! yourself!!!

So here I am caught between hating the leader of the local chapter of the Latin Kings street gang and showing disdain for my former, college English professor...

We should show our disdain and intolerance for these people by deploying our own troops in our own neighborhoods. Figure, if we're going to barge into innocent peoples' houses because they're not Christian and detain them WITHOUT due process, we might as well do the same thing here to known drug-dealers and gangbangers. Why should they get a pass and not an Iraqi woman just because she refuses to be searched under her burqa?

I've always believed that our purpose in life is to build a life of purpose. The organized crime syndicates that are currently winning the drug war take away from that purpose. Fighting for the soul of a country to define the direction and progression of our future generations? We've been there before... Initiate a military draft for THAT purpose, and I'll gladly give what President Abraham Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion."

It would make for a great lesson in "getting our priorities straight." I work to heal my brother, while my government allows me to do so without interference from some of the most vile people society has ever produced.

That mission alone would allow us to regain our place as the world's leader in progressive thinking and social advancement. And it would give others like me the fair opportunity (that we so richly deserve) to piece our families back together the way we've always wanted to.