This provocative, thoroughly researched book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott marshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America's long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA's alliances with drug traffickers (and their bankers) to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan—to name only those countries dealt with in this book. Scott shows that the relationship of U.S. intelligence operators and agencies to the global drug traffic, and to other international criminal networks, deserves greater attention in the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. To date, America's government and policies have done more to foster than to curtail the drug trade. The so-called war on terror, and in particular the war in Afghanistan, constitutes only the latest chapter in this disturbing story.
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading political analyst and poet. His most recent books are The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 and the Deep Politics of War, and Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. He has been awarded the Lannan Poetry Award, and former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass wrote that Scott's Coming to Jakarta "is the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time.” His website can be found at www.peterdalescott.net
Table of Contents
Introduction: Deep History and the Global Drug Connection Part I: Overview Chapter 1: Sanctioned Violence, the Dominance Machine, and the Overworld Part II: The CIA and Drugs Abroad Chapter 2: Mexico, Drugs, the DFS, and the United States Chapter 3: Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma Chapter 4: Rollback, PARU, and Laos: Preparing for Offensive War Chapter 5: Laos: Financing a War by Drugs Chapter 6: The War on Drugs in Asia: A Phony War with Real Casualties Part III: Deep Events and the Drug Connection at Home Chapter 7: The CIA, the Global Drug Connection, and Terrorism Chapter 8: Inside the War Machine: The Profiteers from Enduring Violence Chapter 9: 9/11 and the American Tradition of Engineered Deep Events Part IV: America and Afghanistan Today Chapter 10: Obama and Afghanistan: America's Drug-Corrupted War Chapter 11: Conclusion: The War Machine and the Deep Politics of Drugs Final Words Bibliography
Peter Dale Scott is our most fearless and illuminating chronicler of the lethal and mysterious web of unaccountable violence linking government to organized crime, the drug trade, state terror, and eventuating in disastrous wars. Read this extraordinary book to understand why this country finds itself gridlocked in Afghanistan, yet another costly quagmire, because a small cabal at the top is still dedicated to the mirage of American global dominance.
Michael Parenti
Peter Dale Scott flashes a bright light on a dark illicit world of lowly thugs and high-placed political and moneyed cabals. Thoroughly researched and deeply informed, this book makes for an intriguing read.
Russ Baker
What I like most about Peter Dale Scott are his fierce intellectual curiosity, his willingness to investigate radioactive topics, and his tireless commitment to unearthing the truth. Over the years, he has done more than almost anyone to discover and chronicle the forces that covertly shape our policies. American War Machine may be his greatest work yet.
Sally Denton
Peter Dale Scott writes with his inimitable eloquence about the intersection between U.S. covert operations and international narcotics trafficking and its destructive undermining of American democracy. The past half-century of drug politics—and the country’s complicit acceptance of the violence it has spawned—is an ominous portent for our present and future. American War Machine should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the upper- and underworld marriage that drives contemporary foreign policy.
Daniel Ellsberg
I said of Scott's last brilliant take on this subject, Drugs, Oil and War, that 'It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children.' Now Scott has written an even better book. Read it!
