I didn’t watch the SuperBowl this past weekend. Who cares anyway? But, I did hear about how the Bush administration spent $3.5 mil on commercials which attempted to equate drug users with terrorism. If this is the case, then the Bush family especially the president are terrorists. This attempt to link the drugs with terrorism is ridiculous. Arianna Huffington made some great points in regards to this particular craven ad campaign:
In one particularly odious ad, a series of fresh-faced young people are shown copping to a host of terrorist atrocities: “I helped kids learn how to kill;” “I helped murder families in Colombia;” “I helped blow up buildings.” …
These ads make it seem like the next logical step in the war on terrorism is dropping Daisy Cutters on America’s high schools and shipping teen-age drug users off to Guantanamo Bay. With 54 percent of high school seniors admitting they’ve used illicit drugs, it’s going to get awfully crowded down in Cuba.
In addition to setting new standards for illogic, the ads are also exercises in highly selective finger-pointing. We know, for instance, that bin Laden and al-Qaida used tens of millions of dollars in profits from the diamond industry to fund their operations. So how come we didn’t see a commercial with a woman, say, a senator’s wife, fingering the diamonds on her sparkling tennis bracelet and admitting: “I helped kids learn how to kill?” And, given the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers, and most of the detainees in Cuba, came from Saudi Arabia — where the ruling family, glutted with oil profits, has coddled extremists for decades — why no taxpayer-funded ad showing a soccer mom filling up her SUV and saying: “I helped blow up buildings?”
Simple. Linking diamonds or oil to terror doesn’t fit the Bush agenda. Conflating the war on drugs with the war on terrorism does. These ads are nothing more than a lame-brained attempt to give the drug war a desperately needed makeover — turning it from a dismal, multibillion dollar failure into a vital front in America’s war against the Evil Ones. “Just Say No” repackaged as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” After all, any suggested front in the War on Terrorism can’t be questioned without the questioner being labeled unpatriotic.