The Definition of War

The War on Drugs:

The war on drugs has been propagandized by the media as an actual war – depicted with violence, death, guns -- as if it was any other war in any other time.

Prohibitionist propaganda has insidiously seeped into the deepest level of the American Democratic Experiment, which was built on war…Revolutionary, Civil, and World. The war on drugs has no country of origin, no solitary leader, and is against no particular peoples, but rather is a war against intangibles. Defining War as combat against concepts such as "drug abuse" and "terrorism" is a slippery slope that could lead to rationalization of War to include ethereal concepts, including such basic rights as freedom of religion and association.

The issue often forgotten by the media yet important to note is that the victims of this war, as in any war, are human beings of flesh and blood. What was once a silent war has recently erupted into a full scale military battle just south of the U.S. border. The War on Drugs has now become explicit in its casualties. We see the tanks and the gunfire and we hear about it on the news daily. Rather than the under-cover raids and arrests we are used to learning about on the evening news, the military surge is blatant in its intrusion into our televisions, our homes, our lives. No longer is this a concern of the impoverished or the criminal. It is relevant to our middle-class lives, and as the government continues to wage this War internationally, we fall even deeper into the false notion that a War on Drugs is valid concept.

The American Government has convinced the world that international drug compacts are necessary, and that such an ideal as war against an inanimate object is legitimate. Is it?

What is the definition of WAR?

Do you think the war on drugs has had a positive or negative impact on the use of drugs in the US? Globally?