Analysis of the CATO institute study on illegal immigrant crime rates (highly misleading results)
The study on illegal immigrant crime rates per capita by the CATO institute is fairly misleading, as it only uses a portion of the data provided to come to it's conclusions. The study compares incomplete illegal immigrant data to complete native citizen data, which is what produces the discrepancy in crime rates in the figures, and does not prove that native citizens commit more crimes than illegal immigrants. The CATO only focused on 46 homicides by illegal immigrants, instead of the total 162 according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (which the study claims to be based on), assuming 3.5 times less murders than presented by the evidence, which is clearly what gave rise to the discrepancy in figures and the idea that illegal immigrants commit less crimes. By using incomplete data, they compare a portion of illegal immigrant murders to all native citizen murders, thus making it appear as if illegal immigrants commit less crimes, when in reality they commit more. This blatant misrepresentation of statistical figures is either a deliberate attempt to skew favor in the direction of illegal immigration, or a severe oversight on the part of the CATO institute, an organization with hundreds of researchers and millions of dollars. According to Texas Department of Public Safety and their Illegal alien crime data, the data the CATO institute claims to be based on, there were 1,929 homicide charges and 1,136 homicide convictions of illegal immigrants, between 2011 and 2018, or over a period of seven years, giving an average of 275 charges and 162 convictions of illegal immigrants for murder per year, during this time period. This is obviously far higher than the 46 homicides for illegal immigrants listed in 2015 by the CATO institute, or approximately 3.5 times more than reported by the study. Given the discrepancies in the way the figures are recorded, the immigration status is not often known at the time of arrest by the DHS, which obviously does not have information on all illegal immigrants, who by being here illegally are generally outside of the U.S. system and thus only if arrested previously would this information be known. The institute claims there is a homicide rate of 3.1 per 100,000 citizen for native citizens, while there is 2.6 for illegal immigrants, when based on the idea that illegal immigrants only committed 46 homicides per year. However, when the total figures of all illegal immigrant homicides are recorded and not just by those known to be illegal immigrants prior to their arrests, or a figure of 162 convictions, this results in a real homicide conviction rate of approximately 9.1 per 100,000 citizens for illegal immigrants, in comparison to 3.1 per 100,000 for native citizens, or figures that are about three times higher. It is clear that by using incomplete data they make illegal immigrant homicides look lower than they really are, which is a blatant misrepresentation of the data.
To further expand, the Texas Department of Public Safety presents three figures in it's fact sheet; crimes by illegal immigrants known to be illegal immigrants prior to their arrest, crimes by illegal immigrants determined by illegal immigrants after the fact, and the total amount of crimes committed by all illegal immigrants. In the first set of figures, that is those known to be illegal immigrants before their arrest, only 538 homicide arrests by illegal immigrants are recorded, far less than the 1,929 homicide arrests in the third set of figures which is from all illegal immigrants. This is due to the fact that in the first set of data, only arrests made of illegal immigrants who had prior been fingerprinted and processed by the DHS were included, which obviously only makes up a small percentage of illegal immigrants. "These figures only count individuals who previously had an encounter with DHS that resulted in their fingerprints being entered into the DHS IDENT database. Foreign nationals who enter the country illegally and avoid detection by DHS, but are later arrested by local or state law enforcement for a state offense will not have a DHS response in regard to their lawful status and do not appear in these counts. However, in addition to the PEP program, DHS actively adjudicates the immigration status of individuals incarcerated in the Texas prison system. At this time, more than 26,000 incarcerated individuals have been identified as being in the country illegally, 10,317 of which were not identified through the PEP program at the time of their arrest." As only a small percentage of illegal immigrants were previously known about at the time of their arrest, the figure between who is known to be an illegal immigrant at the time of arrest and who is discovered to be after the fact is naturally going to be much higher. Therefore when going by the third and complete figure which includes all homicides, the figure is far higher than originally presented, thus giving us a real figure that is over 3 times higher than what the CATO institute reports.
For another obvious flaw in the study, it presents itself as a representation for the entire United State's, however it only uses a single year, in a single state, Texas, for the basis of all it's data, which is clearly a small sample in comparison to the overall figures. Another obvious flaw is that it only references a total of 785 homicides, and a mere 46 homicides for illegal immigrants in the year of 2015. This is a continuing trend with the primary problem with the institutes numbers, which is that their figures are incomplete; for example, there were actually 1,317 homicides in 2015 in Texas and not 785, giving a difference of 532 homicides with the CATO institutes figures, or nearly 40% of homicides not recorded. Part of this is due to a difference in federal and state sentencing, with illegal immigrant crime often being handled at the federal level (and other crimes such as drug trafficking), while part of this is due to unsolved crimes lacking a conviction (in part due to the difficulty of tracking murderers and illegal immigrants). It is also the case that exact figures for illegal immigrants are not actually known, giving rise to further discrepancy. While not a fundamental problem to the illegal immigrant data, it's clear that the CATO institute is simply using a small portion of total murders to make it's conclusions, further implicating their data and skewing the math of their figures in their favor.
An analysis for other crimes, other than homicide, is more difficult given the CATO institutes grouping of crimes together differing from the Texas Department of Public Safety. However, for a rough comparison,
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Thursday, July 12, 2018
7th Floor Group - "Shadow Government", according to FBI
7th Floor Group - "Shadow Government", according to FBI
In the course of the Hillary email investigation by the FBI, a number of startling discoveries were made. On top of rampant corruption and rather candid discussions on politics (the infamous speech about a "public and private face" at a wallstreet conference “But if everybody’s watching all of the back-room discussions and the deals, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So you need both a public and a private position.”), according to the FBI there was a criminal conspiracy, known as a secret "Shadow organization" operating in the government, attempting to obstruct the Hillary email investigation and release of the emails to the public. (Page 56) [Old link is dead for some reason, so I added an archived link to it] "There was a powerful group of very high-ranking STATE officials that some referred to as 'The 7th Floor Group' or 'The Shadow Government.' This group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss the FOIA process, Congressional records, and everything CLINTON-related to FOIA/Congressional inquiries," This is according to the FBI database itself. The term "Shadow Government" in this context is similiar to the term "Shadow Banking", the term shadow of which indicates an organization that trails behind another to opportunistically benefit in it's wake (I.E. being it's shadow, following it around), contrasting perhaps somewhat with a more dramatic, hollywood style interpretation. Nonetheless, the presence of this organization was quite disturbing. The FBI documents expands on how the 7th Floor group, as they called themselves, were trying to influence policy in the government and the investigation in to them specifically but that the FBI managed to thwart it.
"Normally, with larger FOIA requests, such has with the CLINTON-related FOIA request, IPS would schedule a rolling release---that meant every weeks or month, the properly reviewed and approved material would be made public. However [Name redacted], and the 7th floor group argued that the release should be all at once in January 2016, for coordination purposes. While IPS official did not have control of the release process of the 296 emails related to the house select committee on Benghazi's request, they did have control for the release process for the approximately 30,000 emails, or 52,455 pages related to the CLINTON FOIA request, and it was decided to be a rolling release." This is subtle, but the implications are important. Basically, they wanted to release the information all at once, which would unnecessarily rush the investigators. The problem is that reviewing emails take time, and forcing a rushed release would prevent newly discovered emails from being released in the future, which means that if they found something new, it wouldn't be viable for prosecution or public release. The FBI could either delay the release by several years to make sure FBI officials got it right all at once (giving the Clintons time to bury the story in the media or wait until after the election was over), or not allow them to release future information if it cropped up. A rather sly tactic, sort of like rushing a trial before the investigation can be completed, and then not being able to prosecute the individual a second time even if new information pops up (as you cannot be tried for the same crime twice). Due to double jeopardy, that is being tried for the same crime twice being illegal, one only needs to avoid any problems immediately in a trial to avoid being sentenced, even if new evidence of guilt surfaces later. This was particularly true in the Jeffery Epstein case who, while ruled guilty of solicitation of an under-aged prostitute and sentenced to 21 months, avoided the heavier charges of running an underage sex ring himself, something the judge who ruled on the case commented on said he would have convicted had the trial not been rushed and the evidence was provided sooner.
The 7th floor organization has been accused of obstructing justice, multiple times, and several of it's members have rather strange connections to different social media groups or government departments, like snapchat (Jennifer Stout), or the justice department with Cheryll Mills who oversaw the prosecution of Hillary and simply "chose not to prosecut"e, interestingly enough being paid 198,000 dollars by the Clintons and receiving immunity after this was exposed. "She worked for no pay in those first months at the State Department, and was officially designated as a "temporary expert-consultant", which allowed her to continue receiving outside income while serving as Clinton's Chief of Staff. On her financial disclosure forms, she reported $198,000 in income from NYU in 2009, during the period her university work overlapped with her time at the State Department, and that she collected an additional $330,000 in vacation and severance payments when she left the university’s payroll in May 2009. Additionally, Mills remained on the Clinton Foundation’s unpaid board for a short time after joining the State Department." So the chief prosecutor botched the trial, was paid off by the Clintons, and given immunity when all this was revealed; obviously seems like the "legitimate" work of the justice department at play. This was along with 5 other clinton aide's, who also received immunity. Nearly half of the emails, or nearly 33,000 that were supposed to be given to the FBI were deleted, 3 weeks after it was requested, and their phones were acid washed with a computer program designed to delete the evidence (a colloquial term, not literal) and destroyed with hammers (actually literally true). Yes, destroying evidence *is illegal*, but good thing they got immunity for it, right? And on top of this, they would not allow the FBI access to the email server supposedly hacked by the Russians [1][2], giving them the ability to spin any story they want.
Members of the 7th floor group included Patrick Kennedy (congressmen and cousin to John F. Kennedy), John Kerry (congressmen and runner-up to George Bush in the 2004 presidential election), Jonathen Finer (Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State), Heather Higginbottom ( United States Secretary of State after John kerry, now leader of charity CARE), Julia Friefield (Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs), Roberta. S. Jacobson (diplomat and assistant secretary of state), and Juliassa Reynoso (lawyer, diplomat). Other notable members include Jennifer Stout (now leader of the snapchat global public policy), Cheryll Mills (given partial immunity in the hillary email case, essentially the fall-girl who got immunity, like when Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal in the whitewater scandal), and Huma Aberdeen, wife of known sexual abuser AnthonyWiener and the individual who ran the Clinton email account. Bizarrely these people seem connected to large social media companies, including snapchat (a convenient way to gather data on people) and Facebook, which is worrisome to say the least. Jacob Sullivan was an individual responsible for up to 1/3 of the classified messages released by September 2015. John Finer, Patrick Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry were all presidential candidates who felt maligned about their own failed presidential runs, and therefore wanted to secure things behind the scenes to ensure they won they presidency next time. In the emails they often talk candidly about perceived corruption with the other democrats and Republicans, and thus justified their own actions somewhat ironically in the belief that everyone else was corrupt.
The behavior and convenient timing of immunity deals is a common thread in the Clinton connected empire. Clinton's have a long history of pardoning or granting immunity to people that cover for them, with Bill Clinton pardoning of commuting the sentences of several hundred people on his literal last day in office. Examples include convicted pedophile and Democrat Congressmen Mel Reynolds, who was the bank for the money laundering scandal the democrats faced while Bill Clinton was in office. Mel Reynolds was convicted of bank fraud, 12 counts of violent sexual assault of a child, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of child pornography. His sentence was commuted on the bank fraud charge and he was allowed to serve the final months under the auspices of a halfway house. Reynolds had served his entire sentence on child sex abuse charges before the commutation of the later convictions. Another individual, Marc Rich, a fugitive who had fled the U.S. during his prosecution, was residing in Switzerland. Rich owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts of tax fraud, was pardoned of tax evasion. He was required to pay a $1 million fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Eisenberg Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels (640,000 m3) of oil. On his last day in office, Bill Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of several hundred other people, including Puerto Rican terrorists and fellow congressmen, and in particular a large number of human and cocaine smugglers. From Cheryill mills to Huma aberdeen, pardons, immunity, or simply not investigating crimes has been the MO to avoid serious jail time, for people connected to their organization. When they "chose not to prosecute" Clinton despite the actions technically being a crime, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. With this kind of access to the state department and justice department, you could get off for almost anything. Including 12 counts of sexual assault on a minor, apparently.
While corruption in politics is not new per se, the depth of corruption, and connection human traffickers, smugglers, rapists, and the judges and lawyers that were supposed to be prosecuting them raises a lot of eyebrows. The damage is not just getting away with the email leaks, but rather their involvement when everyone up to and including rapists, terrorists, smugglers, and numerous cases of fraud. The emails also revealed connections to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China, who donated millions of dollars to their clinton foundation network, and by proxy their campaign. China also received advanced missile technology information, given to them by none other than Bill Clinton. Harvey weinstein was a big donor to both Obama and Clinton, and is now enthralled in a massive sexual abuse scandal, along with Kevin Spacey, and now NXIVM, the sex cult which targeted insecure woman as a part of a "self-help" group and used celebrities to get people's attention, and then forced them in to horrific acts of sexual torture, including branding them with a hot poker for hours. [1][2] NXIVM had access to the emails of many individuals including the Clinton's, and donated large amounts of money to clinton associates, in a part of just another weird, Democrat-connected hollywoot sex cult. The media's impact on politics is probably larger than politicians themselves, and thus control over the media, such as snapchat, facebook and other entities is more than a little disturbing. The media's connection to these same foreign powers, such as China, Qatar and others (such as the Young Turks through Al-Jazeera (being an intelligence organization of Qatar), or CNN and China), only deepends the problem further. With a mere 7% of the media being Republican, and the majority being in favor of Democrats and the left, there is a reason much of this information is not widely known by the public.
"Normally, with larger FOIA requests, such has with the CLINTON-related FOIA request, IPS would schedule a rolling release---that meant every weeks or month, the properly reviewed and approved material would be made public. However [Name redacted], and the 7th floor group argued that the release should be all at once in January 2016, for coordination purposes. While IPS official did not have control of the release process of the 296 emails related to the house select committee on Benghazi's request, they did have control for the release process for the approximately 30,000 emails, or 52,455 pages related to the CLINTON FOIA request, and it was decided to be a rolling release." This is subtle, but the implications are important. Basically, they wanted to release the information all at once, which would unnecessarily rush the investigators. The problem is that reviewing emails take time, and forcing a rushed release would prevent newly discovered emails from being released in the future, which means that if they found something new, it wouldn't be viable for prosecution or public release. The FBI could either delay the release by several years to make sure FBI officials got it right all at once (giving the Clintons time to bury the story in the media or wait until after the election was over), or not allow them to release future information if it cropped up. A rather sly tactic, sort of like rushing a trial before the investigation can be completed, and then not being able to prosecute the individual a second time even if new information pops up (as you cannot be tried for the same crime twice). Due to double jeopardy, that is being tried for the same crime twice being illegal, one only needs to avoid any problems immediately in a trial to avoid being sentenced, even if new evidence of guilt surfaces later. This was particularly true in the Jeffery Epstein case who, while ruled guilty of solicitation of an under-aged prostitute and sentenced to 21 months, avoided the heavier charges of running an underage sex ring himself, something the judge who ruled on the case commented on said he would have convicted had the trial not been rushed and the evidence was provided sooner.
The 7th floor organization has been accused of obstructing justice, multiple times, and several of it's members have rather strange connections to different social media groups or government departments, like snapchat (Jennifer Stout), or the justice department with Cheryll Mills who oversaw the prosecution of Hillary and simply "chose not to prosecut"e, interestingly enough being paid 198,000 dollars by the Clintons and receiving immunity after this was exposed. "She worked for no pay in those first months at the State Department, and was officially designated as a "temporary expert-consultant", which allowed her to continue receiving outside income while serving as Clinton's Chief of Staff. On her financial disclosure forms, she reported $198,000 in income from NYU in 2009, during the period her university work overlapped with her time at the State Department, and that she collected an additional $330,000 in vacation and severance payments when she left the university’s payroll in May 2009. Additionally, Mills remained on the Clinton Foundation’s unpaid board for a short time after joining the State Department." So the chief prosecutor botched the trial, was paid off by the Clintons, and given immunity when all this was revealed; obviously seems like the "legitimate" work of the justice department at play. This was along with 5 other clinton aide's, who also received immunity. Nearly half of the emails, or nearly 33,000 that were supposed to be given to the FBI were deleted, 3 weeks after it was requested, and their phones were acid washed with a computer program designed to delete the evidence (a colloquial term, not literal) and destroyed with hammers (actually literally true). Yes, destroying evidence *is illegal*, but good thing they got immunity for it, right? And on top of this, they would not allow the FBI access to the email server supposedly hacked by the Russians [1][2], giving them the ability to spin any story they want.
Members of the 7th floor group included Patrick Kennedy (congressmen and cousin to John F. Kennedy), John Kerry (congressmen and runner-up to George Bush in the 2004 presidential election), Jonathen Finer (Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State), Heather Higginbottom ( United States Secretary of State after John kerry, now leader of charity CARE), Julia Friefield (Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs), Roberta. S. Jacobson (diplomat and assistant secretary of state), and Juliassa Reynoso (lawyer, diplomat). Other notable members include Jennifer Stout (now leader of the snapchat global public policy), Cheryll Mills (given partial immunity in the hillary email case, essentially the fall-girl who got immunity, like when Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal in the whitewater scandal), and Huma Aberdeen, wife of known sexual abuser AnthonyWiener and the individual who ran the Clinton email account. Bizarrely these people seem connected to large social media companies, including snapchat (a convenient way to gather data on people) and Facebook, which is worrisome to say the least. Jacob Sullivan was an individual responsible for up to 1/3 of the classified messages released by September 2015. John Finer, Patrick Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry were all presidential candidates who felt maligned about their own failed presidential runs, and therefore wanted to secure things behind the scenes to ensure they won they presidency next time. In the emails they often talk candidly about perceived corruption with the other democrats and Republicans, and thus justified their own actions somewhat ironically in the belief that everyone else was corrupt.
The behavior and convenient timing of immunity deals is a common thread in the Clinton connected empire. Clinton's have a long history of pardoning or granting immunity to people that cover for them, with Bill Clinton pardoning of commuting the sentences of several hundred people on his literal last day in office. Examples include convicted pedophile and Democrat Congressmen Mel Reynolds, who was the bank for the money laundering scandal the democrats faced while Bill Clinton was in office. Mel Reynolds was convicted of bank fraud, 12 counts of violent sexual assault of a child, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of child pornography. His sentence was commuted on the bank fraud charge and he was allowed to serve the final months under the auspices of a halfway house. Reynolds had served his entire sentence on child sex abuse charges before the commutation of the later convictions. Another individual, Marc Rich, a fugitive who had fled the U.S. during his prosecution, was residing in Switzerland. Rich owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts of tax fraud, was pardoned of tax evasion. He was required to pay a $1 million fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Eisenberg Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels (640,000 m3) of oil. On his last day in office, Bill Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of several hundred other people, including Puerto Rican terrorists and fellow congressmen, and in particular a large number of human and cocaine smugglers. From Cheryill mills to Huma aberdeen, pardons, immunity, or simply not investigating crimes has been the MO to avoid serious jail time, for people connected to their organization. When they "chose not to prosecute" Clinton despite the actions technically being a crime, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. With this kind of access to the state department and justice department, you could get off for almost anything. Including 12 counts of sexual assault on a minor, apparently.
While corruption in politics is not new per se, the depth of corruption, and connection human traffickers, smugglers, rapists, and the judges and lawyers that were supposed to be prosecuting them raises a lot of eyebrows. The damage is not just getting away with the email leaks, but rather their involvement when everyone up to and including rapists, terrorists, smugglers, and numerous cases of fraud. The emails also revealed connections to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China, who donated millions of dollars to their clinton foundation network, and by proxy their campaign. China also received advanced missile technology information, given to them by none other than Bill Clinton. Harvey weinstein was a big donor to both Obama and Clinton, and is now enthralled in a massive sexual abuse scandal, along with Kevin Spacey, and now NXIVM, the sex cult which targeted insecure woman as a part of a "self-help" group and used celebrities to get people's attention, and then forced them in to horrific acts of sexual torture, including branding them with a hot poker for hours. [1][2] NXIVM had access to the emails of many individuals including the Clinton's, and donated large amounts of money to clinton associates, in a part of just another weird, Democrat-connected hollywoot sex cult. The media's impact on politics is probably larger than politicians themselves, and thus control over the media, such as snapchat, facebook and other entities is more than a little disturbing. The media's connection to these same foreign powers, such as China, Qatar and others (such as the Young Turks through Al-Jazeera (being an intelligence organization of Qatar), or CNN and China), only deepends the problem further. With a mere 7% of the media being Republican, and the majority being in favor of Democrats and the left, there is a reason much of this information is not widely known by the public.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Debunking various myths about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
Debunking various myths about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
Essential to much of the anti-war rhetoric of the last half century has been the propagation of various myths or conspiracy theories about the wars, their origin, and the impact often of U.S. or western involvement in them. There are often claims that the allied nations murdered thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of civilians, caused the wars to start, armed or trained the opposition, or was in some other way acting immorally. While these sorts of conspiracies are present in nearly all wars, and war is unpopular to begin with in general (with the U.S. only having the support 35% of the population upon entrance in to WWII, despite being the victim in pearl harbor), the extreme nature and the political importance of the myths surrounding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars highlights the importance of this issue. Many easily disprovable claims or flat-out fabrications were capitalized upon to push a political agenda, that formed the basis of the anti-war opposition, the most obvious being with the Bush 9/11 investigation, which investigated president George Bush at the time for supposed connections to 9/11 (similar to the Trump Russian-investigation of today), something which 53% of democrats at one point believed was true, even according to left-wing sources. [1] Another common political argument was to suggest that WMD's had not been discovered in Iraq, when in fact they had, and even congressmen privy to the classified information, such as X, actually used it as a weapon to attack George Bush, despite knowing full-well that WMD's had been discovered. Finally, much of the anti-war sentiment surrounded around the idea that the war was over oil, despite the oil predominately going to France, China, and Russia, countries that actually opposed the war, had supplied Iraq with the majority of their weapons, and violated the Iraq oil embargo years prior.[1][2][3] That is before getting in to the fact that American oil companies were likely not happy with the idea of losing oil revenue to new Iraq trade, for the same reason American manufacturers don't like outsourcing to China. Despite many of these stories originating from Qatar, China and Russia, Qatar a country where slavery is legal and approximately 25% of the population are slaves, China another slave-owning communist state and Russia a fervently anti-western country, organizations like the New York Times had no problem repeating the story first produced by Al-Jazeera, the state-ran media organization of Qatar, and regurgitating the anti-western propaganda of these outlets and countries. Many other claims impacted elections and other political outcomes, and still have influence over voters today, claims such as supposed motivations (wanting to invade for oil), death tolls supposedly caused by the U.S. (particularly with drone strikes), methods of operation (false reports of napalm or white phosphorous), and other claims of corruption, such as secretly being responsible for creating or arming the enemy forces.
Perhaps the most effective and poinent political tactic of all is a strategy known as framing, that is simply by framing the the start of the war as being the U.S. lead invasion, rather than the U.S. invasion simply being a response to the ongoing war that had been occurring in Iraq after Saddam's mass murder of innocent people and it's attacks against the Kurdish people. By simply calling the U.S. invasion itself the "Iraq war", or the start of it, it lead to the implication that the U.S. was indirectly responsible for everything that happened within it, despite Saddam murdering hundreds of thousands of his own people before the U.S. had even invaded. By the opposition therefore claiming that an opposing individual is in favor of "The War" they can automatically smear this individual as bad (as who can possibly want a war?), rather than assess their opinion as being of one that's pro intervention; obviously a more accurate description of the the "pro-war" side is that they are in favor of U.S. intervention in to the already existing war in Iraq. Like in WWII, the U.S. invasion in Iraq was not the beginning of the conflict, it was merely an extension of it, in an attempt to curb or prevent the humanitarian issues caused by Saddam Hussein and the Iraq regime. Obviously voting against U.S. intervention is not actually the same as voting against the vague concept of "war" itself, and so simultaneously those against U.S. intervention can believe they are voting against the war in and of itself as well as smear their enemies for being the cause of it, when in reality their position is merely being against the U.S.'s involvement in it. By merely framing the U.S. involvement in a war as the war itself, they can claim to be against "The War", both smearing their opponents as bad and raising themselves up as heroes, when in reality, obviously, voting against intervention in an already existing war, will not end that war. By framing themselves as anti-war, when they were really against intervention, This works in effect in the same way by calling yourself anti-fascist while attacking innocent people and yelling racial slurs at them, or calling yourself a civil rights group who wants to take rights away. It could be surmised essentially that both sides are anti-war, one simply believes that winning it, I.E. by defeating their enemies in combat, is the way to end it, while the other believes in non-intervention. A very simple language manipulation tactic, it nonetheless has been effective in driving many of the misconceptions or downright conspiracies about many wars in recent history. One can frame themselves as being "anti-war", "anti-racism", "anti-fascist" and so on, and then all their actions and beliefs after the fact, such as 9/11 being a hoax or the idea that the U.S. supposedly killed hundreds of thousands of people, are to the end to some inherently moral goal, and thus automatically right without need for facts, logic or even argumentation.
The problem that ties all these conspiracy theories and misleading tactics together, seems to be a sort of aggressive willful ignorance, demanding and insisting upon promoting clearly false or unsubstantiated views in order to promote a specific political viewpoint. A rejection of any and all things that do not support their initial opinion and a desperate cling to the tiniest shred of evidence or even worse, doubt, that may support their preexisting viewpoint, no matter how small or obviously absurd. It is in both this stubbornness and willingness to refuse anything that doesn't promote their preexisting and highly specific worldview, that we have extreme political opinions, that can ultimately become damaging to the real world.
Myth 1: The U.S. killed 500,000+ civilians: No claim is perhaps of greater factual importance however than the accusations of mass murder supposedly committed by the U.S., with nearly 500,000 civilians killed during the war, with estimates varying up to 650,000 civilians. While tragic, the claim the U.S. killed these individuals or was somehow indirectly responsible for it has largely been withdrawn and disproven, particularly with most of the original sources that made these claims admitting to severe errors in their methodology. Wikileaks initially claimed that out of nearly 109,032 deaths in the Iraq war, the U.S. was responsible for approximately 14,705, and thus was more culpable than the U.S. and United Nation's had claimed at 500 to 1000 civilian deaths during the war. [1][2] The Guardian, New York times, and many politicians in the U.S. and abroad capitalized on these claims, attempting to paint the U.S. as responsible for large numbers of civilians deaths abroad. Even if these figures were accurate, this is still a far cry from the 500,000 civilians killed during the war, and the nearly 4.5 million refugees deliberately starved of water and food that likely would have died without U.S. intervention. On top of preventing war with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel (which Iraq had openly stated it planned on invading), the U.S. prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of local Iraqis through overthrowing the Saddam regime, as well as preventing the general oppression of the people under the rule of a dictator. After the U.S. overthrew the failing Saddam regime which had begun to destabilize the country and the middle eastern region as well, the massive death toll per year had dropped significantly, and the country's general stability improved, a claim widely reported even by prior anti-war sources. Saddam released virtually every single prisoner in the country including rapists and murderers, created military training bases for terrorist groups, and bombed entire cities, at one point gassing an entire Kurdish tow, known as the Halajbah poison gas attacks killing x, events which naturally destabilized the region and caused guerrillas to begin resisting the oppression of the Saddam Regime. While sad or tragic if any civilians would have died, let alone by U.S. hands, the idea that the U.S. was responsible for the nearly 500,000+ deaths in Iraq is simply not true, even by many of the largest critics of the U.S., and in fact the U.S. helped reduce how many civilians were being killed in the region as a result of the regime. The 14,000 figure presented by wikileaks was later reduced to 3,000, after it was proven that the wikileaks claims rested on counting the same events multiple times from different sources, and the inclusion of Iraqi government sources, which largely are seen as lacking credibility due to it coming from the Dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, obviously being known for producing false propaganda. The double, tripple, and quadruple counting of the same deaths were often repeated by the original wikileaks source, often counting the deaths from a single attack multiple times due to the simple error of treating different sources as different events instead of covering the same events, thus artificially inflating the numbers. In addition the wikileaks figures still included Saddam regime figures, which were easily disproven and discredited. As tragic as any civilian losses are, the exaggerated figures by media outlets at the time are easily disproven, and refute the concept that the U.S. and the other 30 countries involved in the war did more harm than good. This claim did not stop being repeated however, and has been repeated years later by many politicians including x and x, and by various major news outlets, such as x and x. Many of the same news stories remain unchanged even to this day. Another claim of 130,000 civilians being killed indirectly by U.S. actions cutting off vital supplies from the Iraqis were also widely reported by the same news outlets, however these were later disproven as U.S. actions tended to improve the well being of the local citizens and the authors of the study later admitted that they had based their estimates on mere guesses and removed the entire study from their website, of which only an archived version still exists. This tactic of making grand claims and then removing them after the damage is already done and the myth is spread is fairly common by the media.
Myth 2: Drone strikes are particularly deadly: A common practice for news articles is to write a story, let the fake information mull around in the public discourse, and then delete or change the article months or years later only after the lie has been spread and cemented in the public mind. The companies or organization only issue a retraction after their message has been spread, often to push a certain political agenda, knowing full well that few people who read the original story will ever see the retraction. This is a well known phenomena, a with X and X of the New york times, and etc. It's often been said that a lie has traveled around the world before the truth can even get off the ground, due to the fact that finding all the information about a situation takes time, and that lies can be created instantly and spread more quickly as a result, and are often difficult to refute, especially given the it takes to refute them. While used widely when propagating anti-war conspiracy theories, this particular tactic is perhaps no better exemplified during this time period than the supposed death tolls by drone strikes. With media outlets claiming as high as a 98% failure rate from drone stikes, with a mere 1200 drone strikes supposedly killing nearly 100,000 people Afghanistan alone, they later removed and deleted the articles (with Mic.com in particular removing the ability for their website to be archived to contest it, along with vox) after it became apparent that drones not only didn't kill 100,000 civilians, but that in fact no more than 20,000 civilians died from violent means in the Afghanistan war, total, making this 100,000 figure essentially impossible. Drones obviously could not have killed more people than were killed during during the entire war, making this claim obviously an exaggeration. The official numbers indicate that 85% of the 20,000 deaths in Afghanistan were from the Taliban, with the rest largely being various other terrorist groups in the regions and rouge groups of bandits which took advantage of the ensuing chaos from the invading Pakistan army, known as the Taliban, suggesting that only a fraction of that 20,000 could be from U.S. sources, let alone by drones. A much more reasonable claim of 400 civilians killed out of the 1200 U.S. drone strikes (or in essence civilian death rate of approximately 34%) was presented to the United Nations by the human rights advocacy group X, but was disproven not only by the United Nations, but by Pakistan itself, the country which made the Taliban itself and housed Osama Bin Laden just .8 miles from it's leading intelligence facility (and later admitted to housing Osama Bin Laden), with Pakistan only claiming 67 civilian fatalities from Drones, in comparison to the U.S. claim of 17. [1][2][3][4][5] While tragic that any civilian or innocent person should die, or any person in general, in general the U.S. correctly targeted militants, and did not kill very many civilians in their strikes, a claim which has been widely corroborated even by the U.S.'s enemies. Of course, this fact is inconvenient to the narrative that the U.S. is made up of insane, barbaric monsters who murder civilians for fun, and so the lie that drones were in fact particularly deadly when they were originally designed to prevent civilian casualties was necessary to continue the narrative of supposed western evil, even if this was proven to be obviously false by nearly every metric available. The great irony, or perhaps tragedy is that the drone program was designed specifically to prevent civilian casualties, using the smallest missile on the smallest plane we had with a mere 1 pound of explosive, versus the several thousand bomb explosives used in WWII or that can still be dropped from aircraft today. Precision prevents civilian casualties, and so 300,000 dollar smart bombs and missiles are ideal for avoiding civilian casualties, not causing them. But allowing the narrative that the U.S. and even the CIA were trying to prevent civilian casualties would potentially change people's minds about them, and thus the only solution was to lie in an attempt to galvanize in the minds of various
Myth 3: We armed the other side: Another common claim was that U.S. or western countries were predominately responsible for arming, equipping, or training the individuals in which they fought. Despite this not actually being a case against the invasion as this act would have occurred before any invasion and ironically perhaps necessitated the U.S. invasion, it was a claim often made despite working against the favor of anti-war arguments. The simple reality is that the motive of most anti-war rhetoric generally comes from generally anti-western organization, leading to anti-war western sentiments erroneously being mixed in with anti-war sentiments, resulting in many self contradictions. While the majority of individuals familiar with weaponry can tell you that the most prolific weapons in the world, and that particular part of the world, are from soviet and Chinese origins, such as the Ak-47 with nearly 100 million copies in comparison to only 8 million U.S. M16's (largely in government hands, vs. Ak-47's which generally are in illicit hands), some people unaware about this element of military history do not automatically recognize weapons by their countries of origin. For these people, objective databases of where weapon's that countries utilize come from can be found, for example in the SIPRI (Stockholm Institute of) database. Large weapon's transfers by countries are generally easily tracked, due to their size and general nature, and as a result it is possible to trace the origin of weapons from countries, on each given year to an approximate million dollar figure. From the years between 1950 and 2005 (the years leading up to the Iraq war), the soviet Union Gave 31,067 million dollars or, 31 billion dollars worth of weapons and military equipment to Iraq, France gave 5512 or 5.5 billion dollars worth of equipment, and China gave 4278 million dollars worth of equipment of, 4.3 billion dollars. This is out of 44896 million total dollars or, 45 billion, in 1990's dollars, or is 40.8 billion out of 44 billion dollars, essentially 90.8% of all weapon's sales to Iraq. As we can see, the soviet union was predominately responsible for arming the Iraq military, which is easily understood when one actually looks at the weapons the military forces were using. In fact, France, which also opposed the war along with Russia, was largely responsible for arming Iraq with it's most sophisticated weapon's such as aircraft and radar systems, and supplied a total number of weapons to Iraq close to the figures of China, suggesting a heavy bias in favor of Iraq despite being a dictatorial regime. This was actually illegal to some extent; 45 out of the 88 politicians which lead the Republic of France were implicated in crimes by illegally trading oil with Iraq during the Iraqi oil embargo, and so France's claim that the U.S. was there to steal "their oil" is even less credible given that they were in fact the one's illegally trading oil with Iraq. The original claims that the U.S. was invading to take over the oil wells came from Al-Jazeera news, a government-ran media outlet in Qatar, and then was quickly repeated by none other than the New York Times and RT News. These claims originated literally from a slave-owning country, and then were disseminated by media outlets with left-wing views. Considering the Clinton's connections to the Democrats, New York Times, and Qatar, it's not actually a surprise that these outlets produced or proliferated propaganda that was anti-western at the time.
Myth 4: The invasion "Destabilized" the country: Finally, the notion that the U.S. invasion destabilized Iraq can largely be disproven as well. While the concept of "destabilization" is inherently subjective, the U.S. lead invasion is not what caused Iraq's primary infrastructure to collapse. By virtually every objective measure, such as the GDP, access to water, access to food, access to healthcare, access to electricity and other factors, Iraq's general stability was on the decline before the U.S. invasion, and improved rapidly afterwards. Iraq's decline reached it's peak in 2001, 2 years before the 2003 invasion by the U.S. For example, The notion that the destabilization was due to the U.S. lead invasion of Iraq, and that this lead to ISIS, or terrible conditions, is not only false, but easily disprovable by virtually every metric available.
The formation and creation of the terrorists and Saddam Regime
Myth 5: We created the Terrorists: The Taliban were created in 1994 by the Pakistani ISI (Interservice intelligence agency), six years after the end of the Soviet-Afghanistan war in 1988, as an organization to pose as a terrorist group in order to mask their entrance in to Afghanistan. [1] Known as a state-sponsored terrorist group, the Pakistan government also did the same in the Kargil war, attempting to thinly mask their entrance in to India, by sending in soldiers who were posing as terrorists. "Pakistani Lieutenant general Shahid Aziz, and then head of ISI analysis wing, has confirmed there were no mujahideen but only regular Pakistan Army soldiers who took part in the Kargil War. "There were no Mujahideen, only taped wireless messages, which fooled no one. Our soldiers were made to occupy barren ridges, with hand held weapons and ammunition", Lt Gen Aziz wrote in his article in The Nation daily in January 2013." [2] In the Afghanistan war, the Taliban as well had everything up to and including air strikes, artillery support, and special forces commandos from Pakistan on their side, indicating their Pakistani military support, a claim they later admitted to after it was exposed. "-"This is contrary to the claim that the Taliban were formed from the remnants of the American backed mujhadeen, who stood in opposition to the Taliban during the entire Afghanistan-Taliban conflict, and were again allied with the U.S. in the 2001 invasion, with the U.S. using the last remaining territory held by the northern alliance, which had just 10% of the Afghanistan territory (while the Taliban occupied the other 90%), as a launching point in to the rest of Afghanistan. Two days for 9/11, known as 9/9 in Afghanistan, the leader of the Afghanistan country, Massoud was assassinated by the Taliban after a lengthy war, as the American-backed mujhadeen had remain opposed to the Taliban during the entire conflict. The Taliban and American-backed mujhadeen had dichotomous, and polar opposite religious and ideological viewpoints, and thus it is unlikely that many of their side defected to the Taliban, who often executed not only Mujhadeen members on sight, but also Taliban members which merely did not immediately try and kill Mujhadeen, such as x who attempted to persuade the Taliban in to a peace agreement with Massoud some months prior to Massoud's death. It is unlikely very many Mujhadeen defected to the Taliban, and those that did would be likely to be executed immediately on sight, making such an action futile. Still, the myth that the U.S. created the Taliban or what would later form the Taliban has been crucial to the argument of non-interference, suggesting that the U.S. somehow accidentally creates the enemy's it fights. Other than a complete lack of evidence for Al-Qeada, formed in 1988, or as the Soviet-Afghanistan war was ending (and thus of no practical strategic value to the U.S.), it also would not have made sense to send in untrained, poorly equipped soldiers that did not speak the language and made up less than 100 fighters, who predominately attacked the U.S. backed mujhadeen, or that this organization that was reflexively hostile to U.S. and western powers that was already self funded by billionaires would be
Myth 6: The Iraq invasion caused ISIS to form: Another claim is that ISIS was formed by the ensuing chaos after a result of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, due to the destabilization of the country. However, Iraq's economy, social stability and living conditions have actually improved, meaning that Iraq has actually become more stable over time. The notion that Iraq was destabilized by U.S. actions is objectively false, as by nearly every metric the living conditions of the average citizen have improved. From X, to X, we can clearly see that Iraq is better off after the invasion, meaning it did not in fact destabilize the region. Further, as it was Saddam's plan to invade several surrounding countries, the lack of a war between Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Israel and other countries likely provided stability to the region, and prevented a major regional war, if not global war when Iran's Russian and Chinese connections are considered. In short, U.S. and western activities did not destabilize the region, and actually helped to increase stability. ISIS formed in 2014, 11 years after the U.S. invasion and 9 years after Saddam was captured, as a result of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, or 3 years before ISIS existed. ISIS formed partially as a result of the instability of Syria, which was caused by the brutal repression of it's own people. Members of the Syrian military defected, forming the Syrian defense force, after they refused to slaughter their own people. The Syrian government has killed nearly 200,000 civilians in Syria, while ISIS has killed approximately 4,000, or 2% of the figure as the Syrian government, and ISIS formed 3 years after the civil war began. The argument that increasing the stability in Iraq lead to Syria murdering it's own people and then the creation of ISIS is obviously impossible, unless there is a suggestion of time-traveling terrorists. A poor understanding of timelines often contributes to anti-war rhetoric, where claims of who attacked first or when are confused, often deliberately,
Myth 7: We made the Saddam Regime: Saddam Hussein and his regime were members of the Ba'athist Socialist Party, or the Arab National Socialist Party. Like the National German Worker's Socialist Party or, the Nazi party, they had a particular hatred of jews, and the Ba'athist were heavily inspired by National Socialism, adopting most of their political and worldviews. Established with the help of the Nazis during WWII, this organization later turned to the communists for help, as did many post Nazi sattelite states, and adopted some communist viewpoints, taking them on as a new benefactor. Like Poland, Estonia, and half of Germany, the soviet union was interested in absorbing post-national socialist states in to it's country, believing that socialist countries could more easily be converted to communistic one's. Lenin believed that socialism lead to communism, and thus supported socialism in so far as it was seen as a stepping stone to a communist state. United by their hatred of the jews, Russia and Germany began WWII together when they invaded Poland in 1939, and given that the Germans and many middle eastern countries were also united by their hatred of the jews, they naturally become allies after the war. The Stalinist regime since the 1950's supported the Palestinians against Israel, creating many of the anti-Zionist and anti-semetic conspiracy theories that are still prevalent today, and put hundreds of thousands of jews in gulags, in which many of them died. Saddam Hussein took over the Ba'thist National Socialist Party of Iraq, becoming the country's dictator, being the successor of X, and as explained above largely used Soviet, Chinese, and French weapons in his military. The rise of the Saddam Regime was the product of post-WWII, Cold War politics, largely influenced by the Soviet Union, and their creation can be easily traced to the Soviet Union and the Nazis. Syria, to this day, is still ran by the Ba'athist party and Assad, being allied with the Saddam regime.
Methods of Operation
Myth 8: The war was bad for the economy: In general, war is good for the economy. Be it the U.S. getting out of the depression after WWII when our industry was revitalized or the invention of nuclear power, computers, and the internet (all created by the U.S. military), the impact on industrial production and technological development by war is usually positive. Aside from instances where countries were completely obliterated, war is usually good for technology and the country's economy, and so the idea that a war was bad for a country's economy or cost too much money is rarely backed up by real evidence.
Myth 9: We used banned or improper weapons: Phosphorous, depleted uranium
Political implications and motivations - The war was "over oil", WMD's were never found
Another common issue of the conspiracy theories and it's tactics was to blame certain politicians for the war, such as George Bush, Dick Cheney, the British x, or more generally Republicans or conservatives as a whole, or to assert their motivations were for alternative reasons, such as the war being to obtain oil. As the myths and conspiracies often had political motivations to discredit the opposition (such as claiming JFK was assassinated by a conservative in the CIA rather than a communist with news clippings from the New York times which x percent believed, Trump is secretly working with the Russians which x percent believed, or Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand which 53% of democrats believed), it is important to address not only the claims themselves but the fundamental goals, which was often to accuse opposing sides of crimes or misdeeds to help remove them from office. The truth of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, whether you support them or not, was that overwhelmingly the majority of population within the countries who entered the war supported the actions, and not only specific politicians. Contrary to the concept that the war was Bush's war, or even the U.S.'s war, over 30 countries participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, making it a global affair. 56% of U.S. democrats supported the war, in addition to George Bush and Dick Cheney, meaning that despite claims to the contrary, democrats were just as responsible for entering the war as any other party. Bernie Sanders, who famously claimed he was against the war, supported both the Iraq resolution and the x resolution, suggesting otherwise that he was in favor of actions which would lead to the U.S. war. The voting record contradicts his previous statements, although his claim is that he was unaware that the Iraq resolution would lead to war at the time (despite explicitly being referenced in the document itself), suggesting either incompetence or further lies. Despite this, the myth of the Republicans being responsible for the war and it's efforts has often persisted, with democrats disavowing the war or falsely claiming they did not vote for it and it's provisions, when they often did.
Conspiracy theories by the left against the right have existed for decades, and vice versa. What makes the implications particularly important is that the conspiracies were not only negative towards the military and their actions, but also was used to attack or discredit right-wing politicians. The Clinton Foundation, which also lead DNC or Democratic national council, is known for both accepting money from Qatar and having strong relations with Qatar, as well as giving money to the New York times, with the New York times returning favors such as allowing Bill Clinton to write journalistic pieces defending himself in both the Monica Lewinski scandal, as well as the pardoning scandal where he pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 500 people, including a fellow congressmen who was a pedophile that sexually assaulted 12 children (and laundered money for the democrats) and a woman who refused to implicate Bill Clinton in the whitewater scandal, purjoring herself by refusing to testify against the Clintons. These are claims that the Clinton foundation and leaders have explicitly admitted to, and thus are open knowledge to all sides. Qatar is one of the few countries where slavery is still legal and commonly practiced, with nearly 1 million out of the 4 million people or approximately 25% being slaves, and the state-ran Al-Jazeera news with the self-reported slogan "death to America". Al-Jazeera was the first country to run the conspiracy that the U.S. wanted to invade Iraq for their oil resources, later followed by the Russian-controlled media outlet RT News, and then was picked up first by, the New York Times in the United State's. The conspiracy theory became central to the democrat-led anti-war effort, with at one point x percent of democrats believing in the conspiracy, despite today most democrats dismissing it as a hoax by modern standards. In essence, corrupt countries with dictatorships immediately ran the lies against the U.S., and affiliated political partners within the democrats and U.S. media took to the stories, in order to discredit and attack the U.S. government and people. This is not a matter of debate and is not a political attack against democrats, it is proven, and is something they have admitted to.
Myth 10: The Iraq invasion was to steal oil: One such common claim was that the U.S. was interested in stealing oil, or at least that George Bush and Dick Cheney were, along with various other Republicans. A common tactic is to simply accuse the opposing politician of an unprovable "thought crime", that the other side simply thought the bad thoughts about the situation while their side thought the good thoughts. As it is common in politics to falsely accuse your enemies of misdeeds, despite their being no objective difference between the political actions of both sides, the only remaining argument is to accuse the other side of supporting a policy deal for the wrong reasons, while your side supported it for the right reasons, essentially not accusing the other side of wrong doing but wrong thinking on the issue. As both the right and left in the U.S. supported the war in Iraq, and thus their policy decisions were largely identical, the remaining argument was simply that certain U.S. politicians did so for the wrong motivations, which is hard to disprove to those who have trouble understanding how other's think. Approximately 48% of Democrat senators supported the war, in comparison to X percent, including Bernie Sanders who supported the Iraq Resolution, but conveniently later claimed he was against the U.S. war involvement despite supporting the actions that lead to it. Essentially, the idea is not that they didn't support the same actions, but that they had different reasons for doing so, and that their side had good reasons for doing so, and the other side had bad reasons. Yes democrats supported the war, but not to steal oil like those evil Republicans! Despite all of this, the oil did not actually go to U.S. companies at all, let alone companies owned by George Bush or Dick Cheney, and instead was opened up to the rest of the world, largely at the behest of George bush and the Republicans. The oil predominately went to France, China, and Russia, countries known for violating the oil Embargo on Iraq beforehand, and that complained about the U.S. intervention in to Iraq. On top of this, it would not have made economic sense to try and open up foreign sources of competition for American oil companies. One does not make more money for oil companies by lowering the price of oil, and more oil flooding the market, such as in an oil glut or the current oil drop in prices, would have obviously not been a benefit to U.S. companies for foreign sources of oil to be introduced in to the market. For the same reason U.S. manufacturing sectors are opposed to outsourcing to China, outsourcing to Iraq would actually hurt U.S. oil interests, and therefore the conspiracy makes the claim that the oil companies wanted to do exactly the opposite of what would have benefited them. The notion that a complex conspiracy spanning dozens of countries who were involved in the Iraq war, tricking all of them to invade, was done in order to try and lose money, is obviously absurd. Other than the lack of evidence on their part, and the 21 million emails leaked from the RNC which proved they were not in fact interested in oil revenue at all, it also makes no logical sense.
Further, had the U.S. wanted to steal the oil, there is no country on earth that would have or could have challenged the military might of the U.S., particularly in the region, and thus no external force was capable of stopping the U.S. from stealing the oil if it had chosen to do so. Instead, the commander in Chief of the Armed Forces decided to open the Iraqi oil wells to the rest of the world, which as stated before, would have been detrimental to U.S. oil profits. U.S. oil companies petitioned George Bush to stop the sale of Iraqi oil, but this was largely ignored by Bush, suggesting he was not in fact acting in the favor of the oil companies, even after several open repeated requests by them. In a leak of nearly 21 million emails, not a single one found any obvious link to George Bush and oil companies, in effect vindicating him, and as a result the U.S. military, from supposed "imperialistic" oil ambitions, as well as the rest of Republicans. There simply is no evidence that there was any interest in stealing oil from Iraq, an act that would have hurt U.S. oil companies, and the logic behind the conspiracy fails to make sense as well. The conspiracy, like many others of it's type, often argues against the exact opposite of the truth, which is the intended political intent by those who make the conspiracy theories. On top of this there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, the theories still persist, largely due to ignorance on the subject or an insistence on a false reality.
Myth 11: No WMD's were found: Finally, there was a common claim that no WMD's were found overseas. WMD's were an overall small part of the war effort, and George Bush talked for a mere 14 seconds about them in his 4-hour state of the union address, with 30 minutes dedicated to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Despite the low emphasis by the government at the time, the anti-war rhetoric was dominated by claims that no WMD's were ever found, despite the massacres of innocent people and their brutal repression being the predominate focus of the Iraq resolution, which necessitated a U.S. invasion. WMD's were in fact found in 2004, and in 2006 the information about them was declassified, Despite many of them being degraded, the majority still met the technical classification of WMD, and their exact location was classified until 2006, amid fears terrorists might find them and reverse engineer them, or other foreign powers (such as North Korea or Iran). Famously U.S. Democrat congressmen X criticized Bush about not finding WMD's, despite being made aware of their discovery by being part of the U.S. intelligence committee. He later responded to criticism over this, admitting he was wrong to do so but as he was against the war he felt anything was an acceptable means to defeat the war effort. WMD's overall were of minor importance to the war, with only so many 10's of thousands of victims being from the weapons, as compared to the hundreds of thousands by other weapons. Nonetheless the media framed the entire war as being over WMD's, thus pushing on to pro-war side a motivation that was never as important as suggested, and that ended up vindicating U.S. politicians as well. To this very day in 2018, X percent still believe WMD's were not found, despite evidence to the contrary. The power of the media's manipulation over the American and world public by the media is staggering, with evidence and facts often being less compelling than simple lies which were later disproven, often by the very people who made them.
In Conclusion and policy decisions
Despite the overwhelming saturation of misinformation, often from foreign military powers intending specifically to discredit the United States, all of these arguments and conspiracy theories are essentially a giant deflection. It's doubtful that anti-war conspiracy theorists fundamentally will change their minds if any single issue presented was proven not to be actually not true. It's unlikely that if drone strikes weren't used, or they thought the war made money, or that if the motivations were not about oil, that they'd change their mind and suddenly support the war after learning about these issues. The fundamental disconnect with reality combined with a general lack of understanding of the motivations for the war in the first place generally lead to the beliefs, with the confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance coming second to defend they're already stalwart position against the war they can't possibly begin to explain why they're actually against. With a total and fundamental lack about the actual motivations behind the war and the disregard for anything their political enemy's will say, most are at a loss for the stated objectives of the war itself, or why various countries wanted to invade in the first place. The reality is that none of this discusses the merits of specific policy about the war, be it why we invaded in the first place, or what our policy should be after the fact and if we should withdraw from the wars.
The first reality influencing policy is that we should not withdraw from the wars. Like in any situation involving a power vacuum, leaving before the country is built is likely to lead to a far worse situation. Simply overthrowing a local regime and leaving without nation building is a recipe for disaster, as evidenced by the historical cases where this occurred, be it in WWI which lead to Germany rising to power in a worse war of WWII, Vietnam when the U.S. withdrawals lead to the mass slaughter of millions of innocent Vietnamese people, the U.S. withdrawal from Iran which lead to the current fanatical Islamic regime to take over, or the British withdrawal from India in 1948 which lead to a Muslim invasion that killed approximately 2 million people and drove most of the Sikhs out of the territory. The reality is that when the most powerful entity in a region leaves that territory, even if we can agree that they should leave eventually, simply pulling out of a region suddenly before rebuilding it is never acceptable. When millions of Sikhs were pushed out by muslim invaders after the British withdrew from India, and millions more were killed, it was due to the fact India took a turn for the worst without a major power to stabilize the region. A partial withdrawal from Iraq itself lead to renewed hostilities from insurgents such as ISIS, both empowering them ideologically by making it appear as if we were retreating and mechanically by giving them time to rebuild. The simple reality is that whether you agree with the war or not, leaving before a stable power can replace the U.S.'s presence would only stand to make the situation worse, possibly for the entire world when global terrorist activities are considered. We are already too invested in the region to simply leave, and even if you disagree with the motives that started the war, the only correct, moral path forwards is already set in stone, that is to stay behind and rebuild, or commit to the situation. Claiming to view a war as immoral but then committing an act that would kill even more people obviously does not make logical or moral sense.
The second reality is in understanding why the war occurred at all. Many believe the problem existed the moment they became aware of it, obviously unclear that the war was going on before the U.S. invasion. The U.S. lead invasion of Iraq, involving multiple countries, occurred after Saddam Hussein had already killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and planned on killing millions more. Approximately 4.5 million refugees and internally displaced individuals located within and around Iraq lacked food, water, and basic humanitarian supplies, and Saddam's stated mission objective was to kill the Kurdish people, and invade Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. Amassing troops on the border of many of these countries, Saddam would have invaded these countries, which not only would have triggered a massive war in the middle east, but a war with powers that possessed weapons of mass destruction. In doing so, it easily could have triggered a chain reaction, whereby countries in the surrounding areas would join the conflict also using WMD's, potentially dragging in foreign powers such as U.S. or Russia in to the fray, leading to global conflict. Other than the strong alliances to external powers in the region, the use of WMD's would likely cause other countries to use them as well, leading to an event of mutually assured destruction where countries would begin attacking each other. While it was obvious that WMD's were found in Iraq, the mere threat of such an attack might provoke a nation to preemptively attack Iraq, thus leading to this cascading series of events. While WMD's were an overall small part of the justification of the war, in the media they took a predominant role, and despite being discovered this was widely not reported or even flat out denied in some cases. The humanitarian problems in Iraq, such as the release of prisoners, mass murder of innocent civilians, deliberate starvation of it's citizens and denial of humanitarian supplies to them, and brutal repression of his people, presented a substantial immediate threat to the local citizens, in addition to the threat he posed to the countries around him, western allies, and the world. For moral reasons, the war was necessary to overthrow Saddam, and save the lives of the people he was attempting to kill, given the nearly 500,000 innocent civilians already killed by Saddam.
The great tragedy of the Iraq War is that most of the civilians had died before the U.S. invaded, and without a U.S. invasion likely would have died far larger numbers, given that Saddam was intent on conquering various groups of individuals and had begun to destabilize his countries in numerous ways. After the U.S. intervention, the country of Iraq is far better off, with a better economy, standard of living, less violent deaths per year, and greater levels of freedoms for the average citizen. ISIS was created in Syria in 2014 and not in Iraq, however ISIS is responsible for less than 2% of the murders as the Saddam regime, making them a far smaller threat. The U.S. could not have avoided the Iraq War, because the Iraq War began before the U.S. had even invaded, beginning after the genocide of the Kurdish people and the attacks on Iraq's neighbors began. The simple reality is that a lack of a foreign intervention would not have prevented the massacres Saddam committed, mostly because most of them had already been done, and Saddam was intent on the deaths of innocent people. The invasion was designed to stop this, and was not a random act. Despite the somewhat awkward notion that the U.S. invaded and hundreds of thousands died, like in WWII these people were already being killed, and after several years the U.S. managed to thwart the enemy attacks. Simply associating the deaths with the invasion has made many people believe it was in fact the invasion's fault, which other than a lack of evidence, doesn't make logical sense. On top of the countless conspiracy theories surrounding the wars and the mindless hatred of soldier's, politicians, and fellow citizens alike, the most important element of the war, the reasons for the invasion were rarely discussed, with every argument made by the opposition simply a way to deflect from the key, important points.
Sources
1. United nations figures civilian casualties in the Iraq war- 500-1000 civilians
2. Wikileaks iraq war-log figures of 14,000 civilians, later reduced to 3,000
3.
Essential to much of the anti-war rhetoric of the last half century has been the propagation of various myths or conspiracy theories about the wars, their origin, and the impact often of U.S. or western involvement in them. There are often claims that the allied nations murdered thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of civilians, caused the wars to start, armed or trained the opposition, or was in some other way acting immorally. While these sorts of conspiracies are present in nearly all wars, and war is unpopular to begin with in general (with the U.S. only having the support 35% of the population upon entrance in to WWII, despite being the victim in pearl harbor), the extreme nature and the political importance of the myths surrounding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars highlights the importance of this issue. Many easily disprovable claims or flat-out fabrications were capitalized upon to push a political agenda, that formed the basis of the anti-war opposition, the most obvious being with the Bush 9/11 investigation, which investigated president George Bush at the time for supposed connections to 9/11 (similar to the Trump Russian-investigation of today), something which 53% of democrats at one point believed was true, even according to left-wing sources. [1] Another common political argument was to suggest that WMD's had not been discovered in Iraq, when in fact they had, and even congressmen privy to the classified information, such as X, actually used it as a weapon to attack George Bush, despite knowing full-well that WMD's had been discovered. Finally, much of the anti-war sentiment surrounded around the idea that the war was over oil, despite the oil predominately going to France, China, and Russia, countries that actually opposed the war, had supplied Iraq with the majority of their weapons, and violated the Iraq oil embargo years prior.[1][2][3] That is before getting in to the fact that American oil companies were likely not happy with the idea of losing oil revenue to new Iraq trade, for the same reason American manufacturers don't like outsourcing to China. Despite many of these stories originating from Qatar, China and Russia, Qatar a country where slavery is legal and approximately 25% of the population are slaves, China another slave-owning communist state and Russia a fervently anti-western country, organizations like the New York Times had no problem repeating the story first produced by Al-Jazeera, the state-ran media organization of Qatar, and regurgitating the anti-western propaganda of these outlets and countries. Many other claims impacted elections and other political outcomes, and still have influence over voters today, claims such as supposed motivations (wanting to invade for oil), death tolls supposedly caused by the U.S. (particularly with drone strikes), methods of operation (false reports of napalm or white phosphorous), and other claims of corruption, such as secretly being responsible for creating or arming the enemy forces.
Perhaps the most effective and poinent political tactic of all is a strategy known as framing, that is simply by framing the the start of the war as being the U.S. lead invasion, rather than the U.S. invasion simply being a response to the ongoing war that had been occurring in Iraq after Saddam's mass murder of innocent people and it's attacks against the Kurdish people. By simply calling the U.S. invasion itself the "Iraq war", or the start of it, it lead to the implication that the U.S. was indirectly responsible for everything that happened within it, despite Saddam murdering hundreds of thousands of his own people before the U.S. had even invaded. By the opposition therefore claiming that an opposing individual is in favor of "The War" they can automatically smear this individual as bad (as who can possibly want a war?), rather than assess their opinion as being of one that's pro intervention; obviously a more accurate description of the the "pro-war" side is that they are in favor of U.S. intervention in to the already existing war in Iraq. Like in WWII, the U.S. invasion in Iraq was not the beginning of the conflict, it was merely an extension of it, in an attempt to curb or prevent the humanitarian issues caused by Saddam Hussein and the Iraq regime. Obviously voting against U.S. intervention is not actually the same as voting against the vague concept of "war" itself, and so simultaneously those against U.S. intervention can believe they are voting against the war in and of itself as well as smear their enemies for being the cause of it, when in reality their position is merely being against the U.S.'s involvement in it. By merely framing the U.S. involvement in a war as the war itself, they can claim to be against "The War", both smearing their opponents as bad and raising themselves up as heroes, when in reality, obviously, voting against intervention in an already existing war, will not end that war. By framing themselves as anti-war, when they were really against intervention, This works in effect in the same way by calling yourself anti-fascist while attacking innocent people and yelling racial slurs at them, or calling yourself a civil rights group who wants to take rights away. It could be surmised essentially that both sides are anti-war, one simply believes that winning it, I.E. by defeating their enemies in combat, is the way to end it, while the other believes in non-intervention. A very simple language manipulation tactic, it nonetheless has been effective in driving many of the misconceptions or downright conspiracies about many wars in recent history. One can frame themselves as being "anti-war", "anti-racism", "anti-fascist" and so on, and then all their actions and beliefs after the fact, such as 9/11 being a hoax or the idea that the U.S. supposedly killed hundreds of thousands of people, are to the end to some inherently moral goal, and thus automatically right without need for facts, logic or even argumentation.
The problem that ties all these conspiracy theories and misleading tactics together, seems to be a sort of aggressive willful ignorance, demanding and insisting upon promoting clearly false or unsubstantiated views in order to promote a specific political viewpoint. A rejection of any and all things that do not support their initial opinion and a desperate cling to the tiniest shred of evidence or even worse, doubt, that may support their preexisting viewpoint, no matter how small or obviously absurd. It is in both this stubbornness and willingness to refuse anything that doesn't promote their preexisting and highly specific worldview, that we have extreme political opinions, that can ultimately become damaging to the real world.
Myth 1: The U.S. killed 500,000+ civilians: No claim is perhaps of greater factual importance however than the accusations of mass murder supposedly committed by the U.S., with nearly 500,000 civilians killed during the war, with estimates varying up to 650,000 civilians. While tragic, the claim the U.S. killed these individuals or was somehow indirectly responsible for it has largely been withdrawn and disproven, particularly with most of the original sources that made these claims admitting to severe errors in their methodology. Wikileaks initially claimed that out of nearly 109,032 deaths in the Iraq war, the U.S. was responsible for approximately 14,705, and thus was more culpable than the U.S. and United Nation's had claimed at 500 to 1000 civilian deaths during the war. [1][2] The Guardian, New York times, and many politicians in the U.S. and abroad capitalized on these claims, attempting to paint the U.S. as responsible for large numbers of civilians deaths abroad. Even if these figures were accurate, this is still a far cry from the 500,000 civilians killed during the war, and the nearly 4.5 million refugees deliberately starved of water and food that likely would have died without U.S. intervention. On top of preventing war with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel (which Iraq had openly stated it planned on invading), the U.S. prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of local Iraqis through overthrowing the Saddam regime, as well as preventing the general oppression of the people under the rule of a dictator. After the U.S. overthrew the failing Saddam regime which had begun to destabilize the country and the middle eastern region as well, the massive death toll per year had dropped significantly, and the country's general stability improved, a claim widely reported even by prior anti-war sources. Saddam released virtually every single prisoner in the country including rapists and murderers, created military training bases for terrorist groups, and bombed entire cities, at one point gassing an entire Kurdish tow, known as the Halajbah poison gas attacks killing x, events which naturally destabilized the region and caused guerrillas to begin resisting the oppression of the Saddam Regime. While sad or tragic if any civilians would have died, let alone by U.S. hands, the idea that the U.S. was responsible for the nearly 500,000+ deaths in Iraq is simply not true, even by many of the largest critics of the U.S., and in fact the U.S. helped reduce how many civilians were being killed in the region as a result of the regime. The 14,000 figure presented by wikileaks was later reduced to 3,000, after it was proven that the wikileaks claims rested on counting the same events multiple times from different sources, and the inclusion of Iraqi government sources, which largely are seen as lacking credibility due to it coming from the Dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, obviously being known for producing false propaganda. The double, tripple, and quadruple counting of the same deaths were often repeated by the original wikileaks source, often counting the deaths from a single attack multiple times due to the simple error of treating different sources as different events instead of covering the same events, thus artificially inflating the numbers. In addition the wikileaks figures still included Saddam regime figures, which were easily disproven and discredited. As tragic as any civilian losses are, the exaggerated figures by media outlets at the time are easily disproven, and refute the concept that the U.S. and the other 30 countries involved in the war did more harm than good. This claim did not stop being repeated however, and has been repeated years later by many politicians including x and x, and by various major news outlets, such as x and x. Many of the same news stories remain unchanged even to this day. Another claim of 130,000 civilians being killed indirectly by U.S. actions cutting off vital supplies from the Iraqis were also widely reported by the same news outlets, however these were later disproven as U.S. actions tended to improve the well being of the local citizens and the authors of the study later admitted that they had based their estimates on mere guesses and removed the entire study from their website, of which only an archived version still exists. This tactic of making grand claims and then removing them after the damage is already done and the myth is spread is fairly common by the media.
Myth 2: Drone strikes are particularly deadly: A common practice for news articles is to write a story, let the fake information mull around in the public discourse, and then delete or change the article months or years later only after the lie has been spread and cemented in the public mind. The companies or organization only issue a retraction after their message has been spread, often to push a certain political agenda, knowing full well that few people who read the original story will ever see the retraction. This is a well known phenomena, a with X and X of the New york times, and etc. It's often been said that a lie has traveled around the world before the truth can even get off the ground, due to the fact that finding all the information about a situation takes time, and that lies can be created instantly and spread more quickly as a result, and are often difficult to refute, especially given the it takes to refute them. While used widely when propagating anti-war conspiracy theories, this particular tactic is perhaps no better exemplified during this time period than the supposed death tolls by drone strikes. With media outlets claiming as high as a 98% failure rate from drone stikes, with a mere 1200 drone strikes supposedly killing nearly 100,000 people Afghanistan alone, they later removed and deleted the articles (with Mic.com in particular removing the ability for their website to be archived to contest it, along with vox) after it became apparent that drones not only didn't kill 100,000 civilians, but that in fact no more than 20,000 civilians died from violent means in the Afghanistan war, total, making this 100,000 figure essentially impossible. Drones obviously could not have killed more people than were killed during during the entire war, making this claim obviously an exaggeration. The official numbers indicate that 85% of the 20,000 deaths in Afghanistan were from the Taliban, with the rest largely being various other terrorist groups in the regions and rouge groups of bandits which took advantage of the ensuing chaos from the invading Pakistan army, known as the Taliban, suggesting that only a fraction of that 20,000 could be from U.S. sources, let alone by drones. A much more reasonable claim of 400 civilians killed out of the 1200 U.S. drone strikes (or in essence civilian death rate of approximately 34%) was presented to the United Nations by the human rights advocacy group X, but was disproven not only by the United Nations, but by Pakistan itself, the country which made the Taliban itself and housed Osama Bin Laden just .8 miles from it's leading intelligence facility (and later admitted to housing Osama Bin Laden), with Pakistan only claiming 67 civilian fatalities from Drones, in comparison to the U.S. claim of 17. [1][2][3][4][5] While tragic that any civilian or innocent person should die, or any person in general, in general the U.S. correctly targeted militants, and did not kill very many civilians in their strikes, a claim which has been widely corroborated even by the U.S.'s enemies. Of course, this fact is inconvenient to the narrative that the U.S. is made up of insane, barbaric monsters who murder civilians for fun, and so the lie that drones were in fact particularly deadly when they were originally designed to prevent civilian casualties was necessary to continue the narrative of supposed western evil, even if this was proven to be obviously false by nearly every metric available. The great irony, or perhaps tragedy is that the drone program was designed specifically to prevent civilian casualties, using the smallest missile on the smallest plane we had with a mere 1 pound of explosive, versus the several thousand bomb explosives used in WWII or that can still be dropped from aircraft today. Precision prevents civilian casualties, and so 300,000 dollar smart bombs and missiles are ideal for avoiding civilian casualties, not causing them. But allowing the narrative that the U.S. and even the CIA were trying to prevent civilian casualties would potentially change people's minds about them, and thus the only solution was to lie in an attempt to galvanize in the minds of various
Myth 3: We armed the other side: Another common claim was that U.S. or western countries were predominately responsible for arming, equipping, or training the individuals in which they fought. Despite this not actually being a case against the invasion as this act would have occurred before any invasion and ironically perhaps necessitated the U.S. invasion, it was a claim often made despite working against the favor of anti-war arguments. The simple reality is that the motive of most anti-war rhetoric generally comes from generally anti-western organization, leading to anti-war western sentiments erroneously being mixed in with anti-war sentiments, resulting in many self contradictions. While the majority of individuals familiar with weaponry can tell you that the most prolific weapons in the world, and that particular part of the world, are from soviet and Chinese origins, such as the Ak-47 with nearly 100 million copies in comparison to only 8 million U.S. M16's (largely in government hands, vs. Ak-47's which generally are in illicit hands), some people unaware about this element of military history do not automatically recognize weapons by their countries of origin. For these people, objective databases of where weapon's that countries utilize come from can be found, for example in the SIPRI (Stockholm Institute of) database. Large weapon's transfers by countries are generally easily tracked, due to their size and general nature, and as a result it is possible to trace the origin of weapons from countries, on each given year to an approximate million dollar figure. From the years between 1950 and 2005 (the years leading up to the Iraq war), the soviet Union Gave 31,067 million dollars or, 31 billion dollars worth of weapons and military equipment to Iraq, France gave 5512 or 5.5 billion dollars worth of equipment, and China gave 4278 million dollars worth of equipment of, 4.3 billion dollars. This is out of 44896 million total dollars or, 45 billion, in 1990's dollars, or is 40.8 billion out of 44 billion dollars, essentially 90.8% of all weapon's sales to Iraq. As we can see, the soviet union was predominately responsible for arming the Iraq military, which is easily understood when one actually looks at the weapons the military forces were using. In fact, France, which also opposed the war along with Russia, was largely responsible for arming Iraq with it's most sophisticated weapon's such as aircraft and radar systems, and supplied a total number of weapons to Iraq close to the figures of China, suggesting a heavy bias in favor of Iraq despite being a dictatorial regime. This was actually illegal to some extent; 45 out of the 88 politicians which lead the Republic of France were implicated in crimes by illegally trading oil with Iraq during the Iraqi oil embargo, and so France's claim that the U.S. was there to steal "their oil" is even less credible given that they were in fact the one's illegally trading oil with Iraq. The original claims that the U.S. was invading to take over the oil wells came from Al-Jazeera news, a government-ran media outlet in Qatar, and then was quickly repeated by none other than the New York Times and RT News. These claims originated literally from a slave-owning country, and then were disseminated by media outlets with left-wing views. Considering the Clinton's connections to the Democrats, New York Times, and Qatar, it's not actually a surprise that these outlets produced or proliferated propaganda that was anti-western at the time.
Myth 4: The invasion "Destabilized" the country: Finally, the notion that the U.S. invasion destabilized Iraq can largely be disproven as well. While the concept of "destabilization" is inherently subjective, the U.S. lead invasion is not what caused Iraq's primary infrastructure to collapse. By virtually every objective measure, such as the GDP, access to water, access to food, access to healthcare, access to electricity and other factors, Iraq's general stability was on the decline before the U.S. invasion, and improved rapidly afterwards. Iraq's decline reached it's peak in 2001, 2 years before the 2003 invasion by the U.S. For example, The notion that the destabilization was due to the U.S. lead invasion of Iraq, and that this lead to ISIS, or terrible conditions, is not only false, but easily disprovable by virtually every metric available.
The formation and creation of the terrorists and Saddam Regime
Myth 5: We created the Terrorists: The Taliban were created in 1994 by the Pakistani ISI (Interservice intelligence agency), six years after the end of the Soviet-Afghanistan war in 1988, as an organization to pose as a terrorist group in order to mask their entrance in to Afghanistan. [1] Known as a state-sponsored terrorist group, the Pakistan government also did the same in the Kargil war, attempting to thinly mask their entrance in to India, by sending in soldiers who were posing as terrorists. "Pakistani Lieutenant general Shahid Aziz, and then head of ISI analysis wing, has confirmed there were no mujahideen but only regular Pakistan Army soldiers who took part in the Kargil War. "There were no Mujahideen, only taped wireless messages, which fooled no one. Our soldiers were made to occupy barren ridges, with hand held weapons and ammunition", Lt Gen Aziz wrote in his article in The Nation daily in January 2013." [2] In the Afghanistan war, the Taliban as well had everything up to and including air strikes, artillery support, and special forces commandos from Pakistan on their side, indicating their Pakistani military support, a claim they later admitted to after it was exposed. "-"This is contrary to the claim that the Taliban were formed from the remnants of the American backed mujhadeen, who stood in opposition to the Taliban during the entire Afghanistan-Taliban conflict, and were again allied with the U.S. in the 2001 invasion, with the U.S. using the last remaining territory held by the northern alliance, which had just 10% of the Afghanistan territory (while the Taliban occupied the other 90%), as a launching point in to the rest of Afghanistan. Two days for 9/11, known as 9/9 in Afghanistan, the leader of the Afghanistan country, Massoud was assassinated by the Taliban after a lengthy war, as the American-backed mujhadeen had remain opposed to the Taliban during the entire conflict. The Taliban and American-backed mujhadeen had dichotomous, and polar opposite religious and ideological viewpoints, and thus it is unlikely that many of their side defected to the Taliban, who often executed not only Mujhadeen members on sight, but also Taliban members which merely did not immediately try and kill Mujhadeen, such as x who attempted to persuade the Taliban in to a peace agreement with Massoud some months prior to Massoud's death. It is unlikely very many Mujhadeen defected to the Taliban, and those that did would be likely to be executed immediately on sight, making such an action futile. Still, the myth that the U.S. created the Taliban or what would later form the Taliban has been crucial to the argument of non-interference, suggesting that the U.S. somehow accidentally creates the enemy's it fights. Other than a complete lack of evidence for Al-Qeada, formed in 1988, or as the Soviet-Afghanistan war was ending (and thus of no practical strategic value to the U.S.), it also would not have made sense to send in untrained, poorly equipped soldiers that did not speak the language and made up less than 100 fighters, who predominately attacked the U.S. backed mujhadeen, or that this organization that was reflexively hostile to U.S. and western powers that was already self funded by billionaires would be
Myth 6: The Iraq invasion caused ISIS to form: Another claim is that ISIS was formed by the ensuing chaos after a result of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, due to the destabilization of the country. However, Iraq's economy, social stability and living conditions have actually improved, meaning that Iraq has actually become more stable over time. The notion that Iraq was destabilized by U.S. actions is objectively false, as by nearly every metric the living conditions of the average citizen have improved. From X, to X, we can clearly see that Iraq is better off after the invasion, meaning it did not in fact destabilize the region. Further, as it was Saddam's plan to invade several surrounding countries, the lack of a war between Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Israel and other countries likely provided stability to the region, and prevented a major regional war, if not global war when Iran's Russian and Chinese connections are considered. In short, U.S. and western activities did not destabilize the region, and actually helped to increase stability. ISIS formed in 2014, 11 years after the U.S. invasion and 9 years after Saddam was captured, as a result of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, or 3 years before ISIS existed. ISIS formed partially as a result of the instability of Syria, which was caused by the brutal repression of it's own people. Members of the Syrian military defected, forming the Syrian defense force, after they refused to slaughter their own people. The Syrian government has killed nearly 200,000 civilians in Syria, while ISIS has killed approximately 4,000, or 2% of the figure as the Syrian government, and ISIS formed 3 years after the civil war began. The argument that increasing the stability in Iraq lead to Syria murdering it's own people and then the creation of ISIS is obviously impossible, unless there is a suggestion of time-traveling terrorists. A poor understanding of timelines often contributes to anti-war rhetoric, where claims of who attacked first or when are confused, often deliberately,
Myth 7: We made the Saddam Regime: Saddam Hussein and his regime were members of the Ba'athist Socialist Party, or the Arab National Socialist Party. Like the National German Worker's Socialist Party or, the Nazi party, they had a particular hatred of jews, and the Ba'athist were heavily inspired by National Socialism, adopting most of their political and worldviews. Established with the help of the Nazis during WWII, this organization later turned to the communists for help, as did many post Nazi sattelite states, and adopted some communist viewpoints, taking them on as a new benefactor. Like Poland, Estonia, and half of Germany, the soviet union was interested in absorbing post-national socialist states in to it's country, believing that socialist countries could more easily be converted to communistic one's. Lenin believed that socialism lead to communism, and thus supported socialism in so far as it was seen as a stepping stone to a communist state. United by their hatred of the jews, Russia and Germany began WWII together when they invaded Poland in 1939, and given that the Germans and many middle eastern countries were also united by their hatred of the jews, they naturally become allies after the war. The Stalinist regime since the 1950's supported the Palestinians against Israel, creating many of the anti-Zionist and anti-semetic conspiracy theories that are still prevalent today, and put hundreds of thousands of jews in gulags, in which many of them died. Saddam Hussein took over the Ba'thist National Socialist Party of Iraq, becoming the country's dictator, being the successor of X, and as explained above largely used Soviet, Chinese, and French weapons in his military. The rise of the Saddam Regime was the product of post-WWII, Cold War politics, largely influenced by the Soviet Union, and their creation can be easily traced to the Soviet Union and the Nazis. Syria, to this day, is still ran by the Ba'athist party and Assad, being allied with the Saddam regime.
Methods of Operation
Myth 8: The war was bad for the economy: In general, war is good for the economy. Be it the U.S. getting out of the depression after WWII when our industry was revitalized or the invention of nuclear power, computers, and the internet (all created by the U.S. military), the impact on industrial production and technological development by war is usually positive. Aside from instances where countries were completely obliterated, war is usually good for technology and the country's economy, and so the idea that a war was bad for a country's economy or cost too much money is rarely backed up by real evidence.
Myth 9: We used banned or improper weapons: Phosphorous, depleted uranium
Political implications and motivations - The war was "over oil", WMD's were never found
Another common issue of the conspiracy theories and it's tactics was to blame certain politicians for the war, such as George Bush, Dick Cheney, the British x, or more generally Republicans or conservatives as a whole, or to assert their motivations were for alternative reasons, such as the war being to obtain oil. As the myths and conspiracies often had political motivations to discredit the opposition (such as claiming JFK was assassinated by a conservative in the CIA rather than a communist with news clippings from the New York times which x percent believed, Trump is secretly working with the Russians which x percent believed, or Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand which 53% of democrats believed), it is important to address not only the claims themselves but the fundamental goals, which was often to accuse opposing sides of crimes or misdeeds to help remove them from office. The truth of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, whether you support them or not, was that overwhelmingly the majority of population within the countries who entered the war supported the actions, and not only specific politicians. Contrary to the concept that the war was Bush's war, or even the U.S.'s war, over 30 countries participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, making it a global affair. 56% of U.S. democrats supported the war, in addition to George Bush and Dick Cheney, meaning that despite claims to the contrary, democrats were just as responsible for entering the war as any other party. Bernie Sanders, who famously claimed he was against the war, supported both the Iraq resolution and the x resolution, suggesting otherwise that he was in favor of actions which would lead to the U.S. war. The voting record contradicts his previous statements, although his claim is that he was unaware that the Iraq resolution would lead to war at the time (despite explicitly being referenced in the document itself), suggesting either incompetence or further lies. Despite this, the myth of the Republicans being responsible for the war and it's efforts has often persisted, with democrats disavowing the war or falsely claiming they did not vote for it and it's provisions, when they often did.
Conspiracy theories by the left against the right have existed for decades, and vice versa. What makes the implications particularly important is that the conspiracies were not only negative towards the military and their actions, but also was used to attack or discredit right-wing politicians. The Clinton Foundation, which also lead DNC or Democratic national council, is known for both accepting money from Qatar and having strong relations with Qatar, as well as giving money to the New York times, with the New York times returning favors such as allowing Bill Clinton to write journalistic pieces defending himself in both the Monica Lewinski scandal, as well as the pardoning scandal where he pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 500 people, including a fellow congressmen who was a pedophile that sexually assaulted 12 children (and laundered money for the democrats) and a woman who refused to implicate Bill Clinton in the whitewater scandal, purjoring herself by refusing to testify against the Clintons. These are claims that the Clinton foundation and leaders have explicitly admitted to, and thus are open knowledge to all sides. Qatar is one of the few countries where slavery is still legal and commonly practiced, with nearly 1 million out of the 4 million people or approximately 25% being slaves, and the state-ran Al-Jazeera news with the self-reported slogan "death to America". Al-Jazeera was the first country to run the conspiracy that the U.S. wanted to invade Iraq for their oil resources, later followed by the Russian-controlled media outlet RT News, and then was picked up first by, the New York Times in the United State's. The conspiracy theory became central to the democrat-led anti-war effort, with at one point x percent of democrats believing in the conspiracy, despite today most democrats dismissing it as a hoax by modern standards. In essence, corrupt countries with dictatorships immediately ran the lies against the U.S., and affiliated political partners within the democrats and U.S. media took to the stories, in order to discredit and attack the U.S. government and people. This is not a matter of debate and is not a political attack against democrats, it is proven, and is something they have admitted to.
Myth 10: The Iraq invasion was to steal oil: One such common claim was that the U.S. was interested in stealing oil, or at least that George Bush and Dick Cheney were, along with various other Republicans. A common tactic is to simply accuse the opposing politician of an unprovable "thought crime", that the other side simply thought the bad thoughts about the situation while their side thought the good thoughts. As it is common in politics to falsely accuse your enemies of misdeeds, despite their being no objective difference between the political actions of both sides, the only remaining argument is to accuse the other side of supporting a policy deal for the wrong reasons, while your side supported it for the right reasons, essentially not accusing the other side of wrong doing but wrong thinking on the issue. As both the right and left in the U.S. supported the war in Iraq, and thus their policy decisions were largely identical, the remaining argument was simply that certain U.S. politicians did so for the wrong motivations, which is hard to disprove to those who have trouble understanding how other's think. Approximately 48% of Democrat senators supported the war, in comparison to X percent, including Bernie Sanders who supported the Iraq Resolution, but conveniently later claimed he was against the U.S. war involvement despite supporting the actions that lead to it. Essentially, the idea is not that they didn't support the same actions, but that they had different reasons for doing so, and that their side had good reasons for doing so, and the other side had bad reasons. Yes democrats supported the war, but not to steal oil like those evil Republicans! Despite all of this, the oil did not actually go to U.S. companies at all, let alone companies owned by George Bush or Dick Cheney, and instead was opened up to the rest of the world, largely at the behest of George bush and the Republicans. The oil predominately went to France, China, and Russia, countries known for violating the oil Embargo on Iraq beforehand, and that complained about the U.S. intervention in to Iraq. On top of this, it would not have made economic sense to try and open up foreign sources of competition for American oil companies. One does not make more money for oil companies by lowering the price of oil, and more oil flooding the market, such as in an oil glut or the current oil drop in prices, would have obviously not been a benefit to U.S. companies for foreign sources of oil to be introduced in to the market. For the same reason U.S. manufacturing sectors are opposed to outsourcing to China, outsourcing to Iraq would actually hurt U.S. oil interests, and therefore the conspiracy makes the claim that the oil companies wanted to do exactly the opposite of what would have benefited them. The notion that a complex conspiracy spanning dozens of countries who were involved in the Iraq war, tricking all of them to invade, was done in order to try and lose money, is obviously absurd. Other than the lack of evidence on their part, and the 21 million emails leaked from the RNC which proved they were not in fact interested in oil revenue at all, it also makes no logical sense.
Further, had the U.S. wanted to steal the oil, there is no country on earth that would have or could have challenged the military might of the U.S., particularly in the region, and thus no external force was capable of stopping the U.S. from stealing the oil if it had chosen to do so. Instead, the commander in Chief of the Armed Forces decided to open the Iraqi oil wells to the rest of the world, which as stated before, would have been detrimental to U.S. oil profits. U.S. oil companies petitioned George Bush to stop the sale of Iraqi oil, but this was largely ignored by Bush, suggesting he was not in fact acting in the favor of the oil companies, even after several open repeated requests by them. In a leak of nearly 21 million emails, not a single one found any obvious link to George Bush and oil companies, in effect vindicating him, and as a result the U.S. military, from supposed "imperialistic" oil ambitions, as well as the rest of Republicans. There simply is no evidence that there was any interest in stealing oil from Iraq, an act that would have hurt U.S. oil companies, and the logic behind the conspiracy fails to make sense as well. The conspiracy, like many others of it's type, often argues against the exact opposite of the truth, which is the intended political intent by those who make the conspiracy theories. On top of this there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, the theories still persist, largely due to ignorance on the subject or an insistence on a false reality.
Myth 11: No WMD's were found: Finally, there was a common claim that no WMD's were found overseas. WMD's were an overall small part of the war effort, and George Bush talked for a mere 14 seconds about them in his 4-hour state of the union address, with 30 minutes dedicated to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Despite the low emphasis by the government at the time, the anti-war rhetoric was dominated by claims that no WMD's were ever found, despite the massacres of innocent people and their brutal repression being the predominate focus of the Iraq resolution, which necessitated a U.S. invasion. WMD's were in fact found in 2004, and in 2006 the information about them was declassified, Despite many of them being degraded, the majority still met the technical classification of WMD, and their exact location was classified until 2006, amid fears terrorists might find them and reverse engineer them, or other foreign powers (such as North Korea or Iran). Famously U.S. Democrat congressmen X criticized Bush about not finding WMD's, despite being made aware of their discovery by being part of the U.S. intelligence committee. He later responded to criticism over this, admitting he was wrong to do so but as he was against the war he felt anything was an acceptable means to defeat the war effort. WMD's overall were of minor importance to the war, with only so many 10's of thousands of victims being from the weapons, as compared to the hundreds of thousands by other weapons. Nonetheless the media framed the entire war as being over WMD's, thus pushing on to pro-war side a motivation that was never as important as suggested, and that ended up vindicating U.S. politicians as well. To this very day in 2018, X percent still believe WMD's were not found, despite evidence to the contrary. The power of the media's manipulation over the American and world public by the media is staggering, with evidence and facts often being less compelling than simple lies which were later disproven, often by the very people who made them.
In Conclusion and policy decisions
Despite the overwhelming saturation of misinformation, often from foreign military powers intending specifically to discredit the United States, all of these arguments and conspiracy theories are essentially a giant deflection. It's doubtful that anti-war conspiracy theorists fundamentally will change their minds if any single issue presented was proven not to be actually not true. It's unlikely that if drone strikes weren't used, or they thought the war made money, or that if the motivations were not about oil, that they'd change their mind and suddenly support the war after learning about these issues. The fundamental disconnect with reality combined with a general lack of understanding of the motivations for the war in the first place generally lead to the beliefs, with the confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance coming second to defend they're already stalwart position against the war they can't possibly begin to explain why they're actually against. With a total and fundamental lack about the actual motivations behind the war and the disregard for anything their political enemy's will say, most are at a loss for the stated objectives of the war itself, or why various countries wanted to invade in the first place. The reality is that none of this discusses the merits of specific policy about the war, be it why we invaded in the first place, or what our policy should be after the fact and if we should withdraw from the wars.
The first reality influencing policy is that we should not withdraw from the wars. Like in any situation involving a power vacuum, leaving before the country is built is likely to lead to a far worse situation. Simply overthrowing a local regime and leaving without nation building is a recipe for disaster, as evidenced by the historical cases where this occurred, be it in WWI which lead to Germany rising to power in a worse war of WWII, Vietnam when the U.S. withdrawals lead to the mass slaughter of millions of innocent Vietnamese people, the U.S. withdrawal from Iran which lead to the current fanatical Islamic regime to take over, or the British withdrawal from India in 1948 which lead to a Muslim invasion that killed approximately 2 million people and drove most of the Sikhs out of the territory. The reality is that when the most powerful entity in a region leaves that territory, even if we can agree that they should leave eventually, simply pulling out of a region suddenly before rebuilding it is never acceptable. When millions of Sikhs were pushed out by muslim invaders after the British withdrew from India, and millions more were killed, it was due to the fact India took a turn for the worst without a major power to stabilize the region. A partial withdrawal from Iraq itself lead to renewed hostilities from insurgents such as ISIS, both empowering them ideologically by making it appear as if we were retreating and mechanically by giving them time to rebuild. The simple reality is that whether you agree with the war or not, leaving before a stable power can replace the U.S.'s presence would only stand to make the situation worse, possibly for the entire world when global terrorist activities are considered. We are already too invested in the region to simply leave, and even if you disagree with the motives that started the war, the only correct, moral path forwards is already set in stone, that is to stay behind and rebuild, or commit to the situation. Claiming to view a war as immoral but then committing an act that would kill even more people obviously does not make logical or moral sense.
The second reality is in understanding why the war occurred at all. Many believe the problem existed the moment they became aware of it, obviously unclear that the war was going on before the U.S. invasion. The U.S. lead invasion of Iraq, involving multiple countries, occurred after Saddam Hussein had already killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and planned on killing millions more. Approximately 4.5 million refugees and internally displaced individuals located within and around Iraq lacked food, water, and basic humanitarian supplies, and Saddam's stated mission objective was to kill the Kurdish people, and invade Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. Amassing troops on the border of many of these countries, Saddam would have invaded these countries, which not only would have triggered a massive war in the middle east, but a war with powers that possessed weapons of mass destruction. In doing so, it easily could have triggered a chain reaction, whereby countries in the surrounding areas would join the conflict also using WMD's, potentially dragging in foreign powers such as U.S. or Russia in to the fray, leading to global conflict. Other than the strong alliances to external powers in the region, the use of WMD's would likely cause other countries to use them as well, leading to an event of mutually assured destruction where countries would begin attacking each other. While it was obvious that WMD's were found in Iraq, the mere threat of such an attack might provoke a nation to preemptively attack Iraq, thus leading to this cascading series of events. While WMD's were an overall small part of the justification of the war, in the media they took a predominant role, and despite being discovered this was widely not reported or even flat out denied in some cases. The humanitarian problems in Iraq, such as the release of prisoners, mass murder of innocent civilians, deliberate starvation of it's citizens and denial of humanitarian supplies to them, and brutal repression of his people, presented a substantial immediate threat to the local citizens, in addition to the threat he posed to the countries around him, western allies, and the world. For moral reasons, the war was necessary to overthrow Saddam, and save the lives of the people he was attempting to kill, given the nearly 500,000 innocent civilians already killed by Saddam.
The great tragedy of the Iraq War is that most of the civilians had died before the U.S. invaded, and without a U.S. invasion likely would have died far larger numbers, given that Saddam was intent on conquering various groups of individuals and had begun to destabilize his countries in numerous ways. After the U.S. intervention, the country of Iraq is far better off, with a better economy, standard of living, less violent deaths per year, and greater levels of freedoms for the average citizen. ISIS was created in Syria in 2014 and not in Iraq, however ISIS is responsible for less than 2% of the murders as the Saddam regime, making them a far smaller threat. The U.S. could not have avoided the Iraq War, because the Iraq War began before the U.S. had even invaded, beginning after the genocide of the Kurdish people and the attacks on Iraq's neighbors began. The simple reality is that a lack of a foreign intervention would not have prevented the massacres Saddam committed, mostly because most of them had already been done, and Saddam was intent on the deaths of innocent people. The invasion was designed to stop this, and was not a random act. Despite the somewhat awkward notion that the U.S. invaded and hundreds of thousands died, like in WWII these people were already being killed, and after several years the U.S. managed to thwart the enemy attacks. Simply associating the deaths with the invasion has made many people believe it was in fact the invasion's fault, which other than a lack of evidence, doesn't make logical sense. On top of the countless conspiracy theories surrounding the wars and the mindless hatred of soldier's, politicians, and fellow citizens alike, the most important element of the war, the reasons for the invasion were rarely discussed, with every argument made by the opposition simply a way to deflect from the key, important points.
Sources
1. United nations figures civilian casualties in the Iraq war- 500-1000 civilians
2. Wikileaks iraq war-log figures of 14,000 civilians, later reduced to 3,000
3.
Monday, June 18, 2018
The drawbacks of the legalization and decriminalization of drugs
The drawbacks of the legalization and decriminalization of drugs
There are many arguments that come in favor of the legalization or decriminalization of drugs. While one can make the argument that drugs should be legalized or decriminalized in the sake of freedom or government leniency, or that there should be a greater emphasis on rehabilitation over punitive measures, objectively many illegal drugs have a number of negative consequences on society. A prominent focus by many drug legalizations is a perceived lack of consequences from drug legalization, which simply is not true, and many cases where decriminalization or legalization has been implemented, objectively crime rates have increased. Often there is an emphasis on marijuana specifically, which is seen as a softer drug in comparison to various "hard" drugs such as methamphetamines or cocaine, and is considered by some to be safer than alcohol, despite the individual being approximately 5.4 times more likely to commit violent crimes, and three times as likely to suffer from heart disease. Further, some cases of legalization suggest using the drugs to treat terminally ill diseases like cancer or AID's, despite a complete lack of the effectiveness of doing so, which has been demonstrated to often worsen these conditions in numerous studies (including by those which are still pro legalization). Some argue than prison's are full of non-violent drug offenders, when in reality 53.8% of offenders were in prison for violent crimes and 18.8% for property crimes, with 16.3% for drug offenses and only 3.7% for possession alone. Nonetheless, there are objective facts which can be analyzed before making the decision. Even if you are in favor of legalization or decriminalization, it's important to understand and comprehend the negative consequences that will come from this action, to prepare for them or understand and accept them, rather than suggest they simply are not real or do not exist, which can establish a dangerous precedence. While I personally believe in less punitive measurement for drug use and an emphasis on rehabilitation, which has also proven to be more effective at stopping drug use, I also believe that people should understand the consequences of drug use, and that we should not be more permissive with drug use, instead focusing on preventing it's use and rehabilitating those who use it.
A common argument made by many in favor of legalization is that violent crime will go down. The argument is made that policing crime is in actuality causing it to go up, which despite it's somewhat obviously dubious nature, is a widespread belief among those in favor of legalization or the decriminalization of various drugs. The argument often made is to end "the drug war", and that by not policing crime, it will miraculously or perhaps paradoxically go down. Objectively in the U.S., BJS crime statistics show that individuals who use drugs, even marijuana, are more likely to commit violent crimes, as well as crime in general. Approximately 2.7% of individuals who didn't use drugs at all ended up committing a violent crime, in comparison to 4.8% of alcohol users, 6.3% of heavy alcohol users, 14.6% of marijuana users, and 26.1% of those who used marijuana, cocaine and alcohol. [1] Drug use, even legal drug use, and particularly heavy drug use, made individual far more likely to commit violent crimes. Heavy alcohol users were 2.3 times more likely to commit violent crimes, marijuana users were 5.4 times more likely to commit a violent crime, and cocaine users were 9.6 times more likely to commit a violent crime. Drug use objectively correlates with higher crime and violent crime rates. Despite making up a mere 9.4% of the population [2], drug users (or individuals classified as drug dependent) accounted for approximately 46.7% of all violent criminals [3], as well as 48.9% of all homicides, indicating that drug users were far more likely to commit acts of violence than non-drug users. In addition, other violent crimes such as robbery (66.6) or sexual assault (32.3%) were more frequently committed by drug users, as well as non-violent offenses such as Burglary (67.7%), Larceny (66.6%), Motor Vehicle theft (65.4%), and weapons offenses (53.3%). Most harmful intoxicating substances tend to impair reason and cognitive abilities, as well as change the mood and behavior of the users, making them more prone to acts of aggression, and resultingly violence or violent crime. Even drugs perceived as being a depressant, such as alcohol or marijuana, contributed to higher crime rates, indicating that in fact heavy drug use, even by relatively "soft drugs" can contribute to violent crime. Long term damage to the brain over time also contributes to cognitive impairment, with damage to the brain normally present with heavy drug use, making many of the effects permanent even when the individual is not using. This is generally well known among the average population, or it is generally perceived as being common sense that drug use can result in behavioral changes which result in violence, and has been clinically as well as environmentally confirmed by psychologists and other socialist analysts, but still the myth persists among many that drug use is harmless, or won't increase violent crime rates.
We know objectively that marijuana and other various drugs effect the brain, increasing aggression or impairing cognition, and so we know that it will increase violent crime. It's not just a coincidence that criminal activity is more likely when people are on drugs. Some still will argue that the correlation between drug use and crime is not due to drugs themselves, but due to the socioeconomic status of the individuals involved, suggesting that due to the harsher lifestyle of those who are more likely to use drugs, they naturally are more likely to commit crimes. The truth is that drug use is not much different between the rich and the poor, with heavy alcohol and marijuana use actually more common in the rich than the poor or middle class. Therefore, the argument that poor living standards are what lead to higher crime rates, and those with poorer living standards are just coincidentally more likely to use drugs, is essentially false. Higher crime rates among drug users cannot be explained by socioeconomic status or living standards, or simply by engaging in a criminal lifestyle. "Higher parental income is associated with higher rates of binge drinking and marijuana use. No statistically significant results are found for crystal methamphetamine or other drug use." [1] - "Why does alcohol use increase with an individual’s level of income and education? The answer may be that wealthier individuals are able to afford more alcohol, and they are more likely to attend social activities where alcohol is served, such as parties, fundraisers, and sporting events. However, the exact explanation for this disparity remains unclear" [2] - "Alcohol use, heavy episodic drinking, and marijuana use were all more prevalent among young adults raised in households with greater resources."[3]
Furthermore, scientific studies directly examining the effect on the human brain have been done as well. A scientific determining if a history of violent behavior was present before smoking pot and considering factors such as socioeconomic status and aggressive or antisocial behavior, still found that marijuana was the single strongest predictor of future violent behavior. [4][5] "38% of the participants did try cannabis at least once in their life. Most of them experimented with cannabis in their teens, but then stopped using it. However, 20% of the boys who started using pot by age 18 continued to use it through middle age (32-48 years). One fifth of those who were pot smokers (22%) reported violent behavior that began after beginning to use cannabis, whereas only 0.3% reported violence before using weed. Continued use of cannabis over the life-time of the study was the strongest predictor of violent convictions, even when the other factors that contribute to violent behavior were considered in the statistical analysis. In conclusion, the results show that continued cannabis use is associated with a 7-fold greater odds for subsequent commission of violent crimes."
The criminal lifestyle argument doesn't work when the socioeconomic status of the majority of cannabis users is higher than average. In the Netherlands [Page 89], a country which decriminalized marijuana use, crime rates among drug users were similarly high, with approximately 24% of drug users committing a violent crime, in comparison to X percent of the ordinary population. Other crimes such as property crimes (56%) and vandalism (23%) were similarly higher than average, which indicates a further increase in all criminal action. The majority of drug users were also cannabis users, and responsible for the bulk of the violent crimes. In essence, even in countries where the drug has been legalized or decriminalized, drug users were frequently more violent, dismissing the idea that the drug being illegal or a criminal culture is what caused the high rates of violence. The same was found in X and X. In a study of 5000 [1]
In Portugal for example, decriminalization of all drugs saw a 60% spike in the violent crime rate, which was largely attributed to the legalization of the drugs. Drugs impair cognitive reason, especially heavy drug use, and more people using drugs or the same drug users using more drugs can increase the violent crime rates. The violent crime rate in Portugal eventually fell to 10% above what it was previously after nearly two decades of decriminalization, however in the same time frame U.S. violent crime rates have fallen by nearly 400%, suggesting that Portugal's crime rate likely would have fallen further without the presence of increased drug use. External factors like better police and lower rates of poverty can lower crime, as well as increased technological development, but drug use still caused the crime to be higher than it should be despite this. Crime rates should eventually fall in industrialized countries over time, with better technology and law enforcement capabilities (cameras to catch criminals, phones to call the police, cars to get to location faster, better forensics capabilities etc.) but heavy drug use will make it higher than it could be without it. In the U.S., state's which legalized marijuana saw both a spike in the violent crime rate and total accident rates, with most of the new cases linked to marijuana use (with marijuana found in the user's system at the time, or marijuana use being frequent). Incarcerations have risen slightly from 2001 to 2012 despite the fact that fewer than half as many people are now incarcerated for drug crimes; despite the idea that there would be less people in prison, in fact more people have ended up in prison, due to the higher crime rates.
The one supposed benefit from the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal was the drop in new HIV cases, however this likely was not from the decriminalization of drugs. First, new cases of HIV soared under the provision, with x new case of HIV in the first 10 years. HIV rates actually increased, especially among the drug using population, which due to the unfiltered access to illegal drugs and a lack of regulation on them was likely to be the case. The stop in spread of new HIV cases is likely due to two factors, the first being that the drug population is already heavily affected by HIV and therefore new cases are likely to be rare, and the second being that a new antiviral treatment developed in the U.S. has a nearly 99.97% chance of stopping the spread of HIV. This new drug is more or less responsible for the slowing of the spread of HIV not only in the U.S. but also Africa, South America and India, as well as countries like Portugal, and likely contributed to a reduction in new cases because of it. The decrease in new HIV cases is likely not due to drug legalization at all, but rather new means of treating HIV, which were not created as a result of the decriminalization program.
Drug use was also more likely to result in larger volumes of fatal accidents, particularly car accidents, but increased all accidents in general.
Expansion on Neurological effects
A common question is how marijuana or other drugs can effect violence or aggressive behaviors, and how they effect the brain.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176893/
http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2014-56250-020.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26961342
https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/88896/alzheimers-cognition/marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171006164855.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405830/
https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/88896/alzheimers-cognition/marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_cannabis#Biochemical_mechanisms_in_the_brain
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171006164855.htm
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/DE.41.4.c?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed
https://www.hindustantimes.com/fitness/marijuana-leads-to-changes-in-brain-function-increases-violent-behaviour-research/story-FwphDFkSE6JoXB3RRajX1J.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26961342
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/74394650.pdf
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/continuity-of-cannabis-use-and-violent-offending-over-the-life-course/F8E66EC005BDA73865872BD1F398A567
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1541204014559524
The Effectiveness of the Drug war
While it is obvious that decriminalization or legalization will not lower crime rates and that drug users contribute heavily to crime rates, and therefore higher drug use rates will contribute to higher crime rates, it is also prudent to analyze the effect of the drug war itself. Many consider the drug war to in some way be responsible for a spike in violence or the spike in violence, that it caused or causes this violence, as in comparison to the drug use itself. While partially disproved by the fact drug actually do cause more violent crime and decriminalization often leads to higher crime rates, we can analyze the before and after of the drug war's implementation to see if it has had a positive impact. One contribution to these myths is often the inability to easily dispel the narrative crafted by many in major media positions. Movies in hollywood or news articles often try and pin the blame on the drug war or drug enforcement laws themselves, and due the the lack of an as-powerful way to distribute the counter narrative to the general populace, the myth of the failing drug war persists. In reality, despite the drug war, violent crime in the U.S. and elsewhere is falling, and in places or case where drugs are legalized or decriminalized, violent crime is actually rising.
In the U.S., despite the fact the drug war, a term coined to deride president Ronald Reagan's and Richard Nixon's plans to decrease drug use, has been suggested to be responsible for a rise in violent crime, since these measures have been implemented violent crime has actually gone down. Drug use and violent crime rates have been closely connected for many decdes, with less drug use correlating with lower crime rates, and lower violent crime rates correlating with a renewed emphasis on enforcing drug laws. Since Ronald Reagan's drug enforcement act of 198x, violent crime has fallen by nearly 250%, or dropped from x to x, indicating that in fact violent crime has fallen in the U.S. since the measures were implemented. Contrary to common belief, violent crime is actually falling in the U.S., particularly gun crime, despite the perception by many, confirmed by the study as well, that it is in fact increasing. Violent crime rates are decreasing and have been since the implementation of the drug war, and there is a direct cuasitive link that reducing drug use will reduce violent crime. For example, since the drug war's implementation, most forms of drug use have fallen, such as cocaine or barbiturate use, where as legalized drugs, such as opiods or marijuana, have risen. Drugs that are not as heavily regulated have increased in use, such as marijuana, where as drugs that are more heavily regulated such as cocaine, have fallen. The greater emphasis on enforcing existing drug laws has resulted in lessened use, and decreased enforcement, such as with Obama choosing not to federally regulate marijuana use, and several states such as Colorado legalizing it, or California legalizing it for medical use, has lead to greater use, and greater violent crime in these states. In Colorado violent crime has increased by x, in comparison to x and x for x, while violent crime in general has fallen for the nation at large. Decriminalizing or legalizing drugs has concurrently resulted in higher violent crime rates as well as greater drug use rates, not only in other countries but in the U.S., where as states that have not legalized it are seeing a drop in violent crime. Teen use, which is still illegal, has doubled in states which legalized it for recreational or medical marijuana use, indicating that the higher availability is contributing to greater illicit use. The opiod crisis, largely from legal drugs, is one of the largest healthcare crises facing the nation, which is largely facilitated by the easy access to drugs.
In Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras and El Salvador, after drug legalization crime rates have sky rocketed, in comparison to X and X and X where it has dropped. The impact of legalization is obvious, with harsher drug enforcement laws resulting in less drug use, and softer drug enforcement laws or none at all resulting in greater use. While the use of certain drugs such as marijuana or opiods is often linked to a failure of the drug war, it is actually prove of it's effectiveness. When the drug war was stopped against marijuana, it's use and violent crime increased, while when it was continued against it, violent crime decreased. Violent crime actually has decreased because of the drug war, and in it's absence has decreased. This is definite evidence that the drug war is actually working, and that the permissive of drug use has a net negative effect on society. Drugs also only make up a small fraction of the revenue generated by international organized criminal organizations. Of the 870 billion dollars generated by criminal activity by organized crime, illicit drug sales only make up approximately 320 billion, or 36.9% of their revenue. Violent crime, property offenses, and other smuggling crimes often make up the bulk of their revenue, and violent criminal groups have shown a proclivity towards increasing violence when they can no longer make money from non-violent crimes like selling drugs, such as in Mexico. While keeping drugs illegal to appease the cartels may not be enough of a justification, it nonetheless is further proof that legalizing drugs will not reduce crime rates. As only a small portion of drugs, such as marijuana, is likely to be legalized (representing 40 billion dollars or approximately 5% of their revenue), this impact is likely going to be lower, and even with full legalization black markets will still exist, either to sale to children or to avoid taxes. As children under 21 or 18 cannot legally consume drugs but are often among the biggest consumers of these drugs, an illicit market for underage use is likely to always exist, such as with the heavy prevalence of alcohol use among minors, or marijuana and other drug use among high school students, with nearly half reporting to have tried marijuana, and a quarter cocaine. The simple reality is that there will always be a profitable market for drugs even if legalized for adults, and to avoid taxes. In New York, illegal cigarette sales is a nearly 5 billion dollar trade, designed to avoid the high, 200% tax rate on the drugs in the city. With high taxes will come those invariably trying to avoid this taxation, and thus a black market for drugs. Therefore even total legalization would only partially cut in to the profits of organized crime, likely not enough to defeat them. In essence, legalizing drugs would not stop the cartels, only force them to turn to violent crime to continue making their revenue, sometimes even against legal drug vendors. Ending the drug war obviously won't stop cartels or reduce the mental impairment from drugs themselves, and thus would not lower violent crime rates.
Another key argument made against the drug war is not it's lack of effectiveness, but it's negative impact on society by being overly harsh in it's punitive measures. Among these is the idea that the drug war largely fills prisons with non-violent drug offenders, who wouldn't be in prison if drugs were not made illegal. While there is some arguments to be made in the favor of an emphasis on rehabilitation, most of those incarcerated in the justice system are not in primarily for drug offenses. 53.8% of those in U.S. prisons and jail were incarcerated for violent offenses, while 18.8% are in prison for property or theft offenses, and 16.3% were in prison for drug offenses. [1] Of those in prison for drug offenses, only 3.7% were in prison for possession alone, usually due to the possession of incredibly large volumes, with the majority of drug offenses being for using a drug while committing another crime, be it violent offenses, drug trafficking, drug production, intoxication while driving or other similar crimes. A very small percent of criminals are in prison or jail for small time drug offenses, or simply using the drug, typically requiring extensive repeat use or external crimes associated with it's use. Part of the confusion comes from the statistics from the federal Bureau of prison in comparison to the total figures; state and local prisons and jails hold the majority of the 2.4 million U.S. prison population, while federal prisons only hold approximatively 200,000. Therefore federal figures are a small overall fraction of the total figures, and therefore do not represent the total prison population.
Nonetheless, there is still an argument to be made for an emphasis on rehabilitation over incarceration. While if an individual refuses to be rehabilitated incarceration may be the only recourse, rehabilitation is generally a more lenient approach, that is less punitive and harsh, allowing for softer treatment of drug uses. State mandated rehabilitation therefore would be a much nicer way of reducing drug use, rather than incarceration, and likely would cost less than imprisonment, which stands at approximately 30,000x per criminal, in comparison to about 5,000-10,000 for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation has also proven to be more successful in reducing use rates than incarceration, and as with lower use rates would come lower crime rates. x amount etc. Therefore, a strong argument can be made for rehabilitation, to be more kind, lower crime rates more and cost us less money, however likely not for legalization or a total stop on enforcing drug laws outright.
The final argument that is made about drug legalization is by a comparison of alcohol prohibition.
Common health effects
Probably the most damaging effect of drug use, other than violent crime, is the effect on the health of the general population. While higher crime rates represent an injustice to the population, and infringes on other's rights to safety, the health impact is by far more severe in terms of total figures, with more deaths and injuries resulting from the negative health consequences than from violent crimes. Accidents, suicide and other self inflicted injuries are often more common than injuries or deaths from violent crimes, with a mere 15,000 homicides in 2016 in comparison to approximately 150,000 accidental deaths, with the figure ranging annually depending on the year. Car accidents etc. x percent suicidal people.
Health problems relating from drug use is even higher than this, for both illicit and illicit drug use. Even legal drugs, such as cigarettes, contributes heavily as a cause of death and drives up medical costs, especially for the average tax payer who often must pay for these medical bills. 480,000 people die a year from cigarettes, out of 2.6 million total deaths, or 18.5%, and smokers tend to die early and consume a disproportionate amount of government funded health resources. It costs the U.S. government approximately x billion dollars per year, or x percent out of 820 billion dollars annually for cigarettes alone, far greater than the slight increase in tax revenue from cigarette sales, or x billion per year. Alcohol and opiod use similarly take up large portions of the U.S. healthcare system, and cost the U.S. population far more in health and financial problems Drug dependence was linked as a primary cause to poverty, with x percent of those in poverty being heavy drug users, with drugs either putting large financial constraints on users or impairing their ability to work effectively. X percent of homeless people were drug users, along with x percent of the mentally ill, and x percent of suicidal people, suggesting that drugs have a fairly negative impact on an individuals overall well being and mental state, and concurrently their ability to hold down a job or lead a normal family life. In poor urban environments, such as Detroit or Chicago, violent crime was much higher among the white and black population standing at x, and drug use correlated directly with higher violent crime rates and single parent households, with x percent of the population having a single parent household, vs. x percent of criminals being from a single parent household.
Marijuana in particular is generally more dangerous than many people perceive it to be, even being more deadly than cigarettes in some way. While the overdose rate of marijuana and cigarettes are quite low, their chance to cause cancer or heart disease and other related health problems is quite high, particularly lung disease. Marijuana use resulted in a tripling of the likelihood of heart disease or a 3-fold higher risk in mortality, and a 4.8 times higher rate to suffer from a heart attack while using marijuana, rates higher than from cigarette use. [1][2][3] Lung disease also increased beyond the ordinary population, and marijuana smoke has been found to be as likely to cause cancer and lung disease as cigarette smoke, or x amount above the general population. There are approximately 30,000 lung disease deaths annually from marijuana, far more than the 2,000 alcohol overdose deaths per year. Cancer rates also increased, to x percent. Exact figures are hard to tally, but between x and x thousand deaths are believed to be from marijuana use. Among drug users at large, for all drugs, the death rate was also much higher, shaving as much as 10-25 years off the life of the users. [4] All of these problems were made wore by obesity, which has also been shown to magnify the impact of drug use dramatically, with obesity rates being much higher in the U.S. (38%) than much of the rest of the world (OECD average: 16%). As drug use often results in a more sedentary lifestyle, due to the impact on the lungs and heart and cognitive impairment (particularly when drunk or high), weight gain was often the result of drug use, in addition to hormonal fluctuations caused by some drugs, compounding the issue further. Furthermore heart disease and cancer were the leading causes of death in the United States, with approximately 600,000 deaths from heart disease and cancer annually, and an additional 400,000 deaths from heart disease related symptoms such as nephrotic kidney disease or lower respiratory disease, resulting in approximately 65% of the 2.6 million deaths annually in the United States. A doubling or tripling of the chance to get heart disease by the average citizen would have a devastating impact on public health, and represents a national security issue.
Marijuana also cannot cure cancer, contrary to some belief. Even pro-marijuana legalizing organizations and articles, such as x and x, report from the same medical study, which says "X-marijuna can't cure cancer". According to the study, x
Should we regulate drugs?
A question proposed after this data is, should we regulate these drugs? The negative health effects on society, combined with the higher accident and crime rate, inflicts a massive human loss, as well as financial one when policing the higher crime, rehabilitating drug users, and the health problems that result from drug use. While obviously a negative to society, there still remains the question, should we regulate drugs, and if so, to what extent and how? In my opinion, the simple answer is yes, we should regulate drugs, however the more complex answer is that the system should shift from a more punitive role to a more rehabilitative one. While it is true that the drug war has largely been effective, it would be more effective and burden the average citizen less if rehabilitation was more of an emphasis, even state-mandated rehabilitation, as opposed to mass incarceration. Many drug users go right back to using as soon as they are out, with a lower effectiveness of treating drug users than rehabilitation methods, and therefore court-ordered rehabilitation, perhaps encouraged by the threat of incarceration, should be the focus instead. Drug use is a net negative to society in many ways, from economic productivity, to financial costs to the average tax payer, to health and crime related issues, and therefore should not be encouraged. It is one thing to take a more compassionate role in trying to treat drug use addiction, and it is another entirely to completely ignore it. We should not be permissive, but rather use a gentler hand to prevent the problem of heavy drug use.
On the question of freedom, one has to ask how much freedom an individual can be given before it begins to infringe upon the freedom and safety of others. Most would agree that nuclear weapons should not be in the hands of citizens, as would they tanks or military aircraft, as the destructive damage they can inflict, even if used rarely, would outweigh the benefit to self defense and recreation. One could not reasonably hop in their tank in the middle of the night if a burglary occurred, and if they somehow did would destroy their own home or possibly kill them families or neighbors in the pursuit, causing too much collateral damage even if somehow used effectively. In the pursuit of self defense, a tank would likely be not only overboard, but useless, and too destructive even if used properly. Similarly these weapons if available on the open market could easily fall in to the wrong hands, with for example Iran or North korea likely to buy nuclear weapons if they could be readily purchased on the general market, making the proliferation risk to our enemies and other rogue entities too grave. Almost all people draw a limit somewhere as to where what items should be permitted to society, given the damage they can cause, and therefore the question that needs to be asked is how destructive is the object in relation to what it provides to society. Drugs are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, and 10's of thousands of murders, violent crimes and accidents which put even non-drug users at risk, which is far more injuries and deaths than firearms, cars, or other heavily regulated objects inflict. If the damage caused to society is too great, and the benefit from it too low, does it warrant regulation? In general most would agree yes purely on the basis of numbers, but it is likely many will make an exception for their preferred hobby, despite the damage it causes. However I would ask readers to seriously consider this damage and impact on society, and ask themselves if the minor benefit of the temporary gratification that comes from drug use are worth the high crime and health problems we would and even currently experience. Is the price in human life, physical capital, tax money, and the quality of life of the average citizen worth the minor, if not nearly non-existent benefit that comes from drug use? In my opinion it is not, however the choice is up to the citizen, hopefully who will be informed enough to make the right decision for themselves.
TL;DR Or in conclusion
Drugs obviously have an impact on behavior, which can often lead to violence, car accidents, health problems, or other harmful effects on society. Society should consider and weigh these risks before legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and put in measures (such as more effective law enforcement and rehabilitation clinics), before legalizing them. The various myths about how the drug war or other potential causes are really responsible for crime are easily refuted, and unfortunately these myths persist in society despite this. Above all I would urge caution before nonchalantly legalizing all drugs merely believing they are harmless, as overwhelming evidence to the contrary exists that shows otherwise.
There are many arguments that come in favor of the legalization or decriminalization of drugs. While one can make the argument that drugs should be legalized or decriminalized in the sake of freedom or government leniency, or that there should be a greater emphasis on rehabilitation over punitive measures, objectively many illegal drugs have a number of negative consequences on society. A prominent focus by many drug legalizations is a perceived lack of consequences from drug legalization, which simply is not true, and many cases where decriminalization or legalization has been implemented, objectively crime rates have increased. Often there is an emphasis on marijuana specifically, which is seen as a softer drug in comparison to various "hard" drugs such as methamphetamines or cocaine, and is considered by some to be safer than alcohol, despite the individual being approximately 5.4 times more likely to commit violent crimes, and three times as likely to suffer from heart disease. Further, some cases of legalization suggest using the drugs to treat terminally ill diseases like cancer or AID's, despite a complete lack of the effectiveness of doing so, which has been demonstrated to often worsen these conditions in numerous studies (including by those which are still pro legalization). Some argue than prison's are full of non-violent drug offenders, when in reality 53.8% of offenders were in prison for violent crimes and 18.8% for property crimes, with 16.3% for drug offenses and only 3.7% for possession alone. Nonetheless, there are objective facts which can be analyzed before making the decision. Even if you are in favor of legalization or decriminalization, it's important to understand and comprehend the negative consequences that will come from this action, to prepare for them or understand and accept them, rather than suggest they simply are not real or do not exist, which can establish a dangerous precedence. While I personally believe in less punitive measurement for drug use and an emphasis on rehabilitation, which has also proven to be more effective at stopping drug use, I also believe that people should understand the consequences of drug use, and that we should not be more permissive with drug use, instead focusing on preventing it's use and rehabilitating those who use it.
A common argument made by many in favor of legalization is that violent crime will go down. The argument is made that policing crime is in actuality causing it to go up, which despite it's somewhat obviously dubious nature, is a widespread belief among those in favor of legalization or the decriminalization of various drugs. The argument often made is to end "the drug war", and that by not policing crime, it will miraculously or perhaps paradoxically go down. Objectively in the U.S., BJS crime statistics show that individuals who use drugs, even marijuana, are more likely to commit violent crimes, as well as crime in general. Approximately 2.7% of individuals who didn't use drugs at all ended up committing a violent crime, in comparison to 4.8% of alcohol users, 6.3% of heavy alcohol users, 14.6% of marijuana users, and 26.1% of those who used marijuana, cocaine and alcohol. [1] Drug use, even legal drug use, and particularly heavy drug use, made individual far more likely to commit violent crimes. Heavy alcohol users were 2.3 times more likely to commit violent crimes, marijuana users were 5.4 times more likely to commit a violent crime, and cocaine users were 9.6 times more likely to commit a violent crime. Drug use objectively correlates with higher crime and violent crime rates. Despite making up a mere 9.4% of the population [2], drug users (or individuals classified as drug dependent) accounted for approximately 46.7% of all violent criminals [3], as well as 48.9% of all homicides, indicating that drug users were far more likely to commit acts of violence than non-drug users. In addition, other violent crimes such as robbery (66.6) or sexual assault (32.3%) were more frequently committed by drug users, as well as non-violent offenses such as Burglary (67.7%), Larceny (66.6%), Motor Vehicle theft (65.4%), and weapons offenses (53.3%). Most harmful intoxicating substances tend to impair reason and cognitive abilities, as well as change the mood and behavior of the users, making them more prone to acts of aggression, and resultingly violence or violent crime. Even drugs perceived as being a depressant, such as alcohol or marijuana, contributed to higher crime rates, indicating that in fact heavy drug use, even by relatively "soft drugs" can contribute to violent crime. Long term damage to the brain over time also contributes to cognitive impairment, with damage to the brain normally present with heavy drug use, making many of the effects permanent even when the individual is not using. This is generally well known among the average population, or it is generally perceived as being common sense that drug use can result in behavioral changes which result in violence, and has been clinically as well as environmentally confirmed by psychologists and other socialist analysts, but still the myth persists among many that drug use is harmless, or won't increase violent crime rates.
We know objectively that marijuana and other various drugs effect the brain, increasing aggression or impairing cognition, and so we know that it will increase violent crime. It's not just a coincidence that criminal activity is more likely when people are on drugs. Some still will argue that the correlation between drug use and crime is not due to drugs themselves, but due to the socioeconomic status of the individuals involved, suggesting that due to the harsher lifestyle of those who are more likely to use drugs, they naturally are more likely to commit crimes. The truth is that drug use is not much different between the rich and the poor, with heavy alcohol and marijuana use actually more common in the rich than the poor or middle class. Therefore, the argument that poor living standards are what lead to higher crime rates, and those with poorer living standards are just coincidentally more likely to use drugs, is essentially false. Higher crime rates among drug users cannot be explained by socioeconomic status or living standards, or simply by engaging in a criminal lifestyle. "Higher parental income is associated with higher rates of binge drinking and marijuana use. No statistically significant results are found for crystal methamphetamine or other drug use." [1] - "Why does alcohol use increase with an individual’s level of income and education? The answer may be that wealthier individuals are able to afford more alcohol, and they are more likely to attend social activities where alcohol is served, such as parties, fundraisers, and sporting events. However, the exact explanation for this disparity remains unclear" [2] - "Alcohol use, heavy episodic drinking, and marijuana use were all more prevalent among young adults raised in households with greater resources."[3]
Furthermore, scientific studies directly examining the effect on the human brain have been done as well. A scientific determining if a history of violent behavior was present before smoking pot and considering factors such as socioeconomic status and aggressive or antisocial behavior, still found that marijuana was the single strongest predictor of future violent behavior. [4][5] "38% of the participants did try cannabis at least once in their life. Most of them experimented with cannabis in their teens, but then stopped using it. However, 20% of the boys who started using pot by age 18 continued to use it through middle age (32-48 years). One fifth of those who were pot smokers (22%) reported violent behavior that began after beginning to use cannabis, whereas only 0.3% reported violence before using weed. Continued use of cannabis over the life-time of the study was the strongest predictor of violent convictions, even when the other factors that contribute to violent behavior were considered in the statistical analysis. In conclusion, the results show that continued cannabis use is associated with a 7-fold greater odds for subsequent commission of violent crimes."
The criminal lifestyle argument doesn't work when the socioeconomic status of the majority of cannabis users is higher than average. In the Netherlands [Page 89], a country which decriminalized marijuana use, crime rates among drug users were similarly high, with approximately 24% of drug users committing a violent crime, in comparison to X percent of the ordinary population. Other crimes such as property crimes (56%) and vandalism (23%) were similarly higher than average, which indicates a further increase in all criminal action. The majority of drug users were also cannabis users, and responsible for the bulk of the violent crimes. In essence, even in countries where the drug has been legalized or decriminalized, drug users were frequently more violent, dismissing the idea that the drug being illegal or a criminal culture is what caused the high rates of violence. The same was found in X and X. In a study of 5000 [1]
In Portugal for example, decriminalization of all drugs saw a 60% spike in the violent crime rate, which was largely attributed to the legalization of the drugs. Drugs impair cognitive reason, especially heavy drug use, and more people using drugs or the same drug users using more drugs can increase the violent crime rates. The violent crime rate in Portugal eventually fell to 10% above what it was previously after nearly two decades of decriminalization, however in the same time frame U.S. violent crime rates have fallen by nearly 400%, suggesting that Portugal's crime rate likely would have fallen further without the presence of increased drug use. External factors like better police and lower rates of poverty can lower crime, as well as increased technological development, but drug use still caused the crime to be higher than it should be despite this. Crime rates should eventually fall in industrialized countries over time, with better technology and law enforcement capabilities (cameras to catch criminals, phones to call the police, cars to get to location faster, better forensics capabilities etc.) but heavy drug use will make it higher than it could be without it. In the U.S., state's which legalized marijuana saw both a spike in the violent crime rate and total accident rates, with most of the new cases linked to marijuana use (with marijuana found in the user's system at the time, or marijuana use being frequent). Incarcerations have risen slightly from 2001 to 2012 despite the fact that fewer than half as many people are now incarcerated for drug crimes; despite the idea that there would be less people in prison, in fact more people have ended up in prison, due to the higher crime rates.
The one supposed benefit from the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal was the drop in new HIV cases, however this likely was not from the decriminalization of drugs. First, new cases of HIV soared under the provision, with x new case of HIV in the first 10 years. HIV rates actually increased, especially among the drug using population, which due to the unfiltered access to illegal drugs and a lack of regulation on them was likely to be the case. The stop in spread of new HIV cases is likely due to two factors, the first being that the drug population is already heavily affected by HIV and therefore new cases are likely to be rare, and the second being that a new antiviral treatment developed in the U.S. has a nearly 99.97% chance of stopping the spread of HIV. This new drug is more or less responsible for the slowing of the spread of HIV not only in the U.S. but also Africa, South America and India, as well as countries like Portugal, and likely contributed to a reduction in new cases because of it. The decrease in new HIV cases is likely not due to drug legalization at all, but rather new means of treating HIV, which were not created as a result of the decriminalization program.
Drug use was also more likely to result in larger volumes of fatal accidents, particularly car accidents, but increased all accidents in general.
Expansion on Neurological effects
A common question is how marijuana or other drugs can effect violence or aggressive behaviors, and how they effect the brain.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176893/
http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2014-56250-020.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26961342
https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/88896/alzheimers-cognition/marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171006164855.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405830/
https://www.mdedge.com/neurologyreviews/article/88896/alzheimers-cognition/marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_cannabis#Biochemical_mechanisms_in_the_brain
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171006164855.htm
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/DE.41.4.c?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed
https://www.hindustantimes.com/fitness/marijuana-leads-to-changes-in-brain-function-increases-violent-behaviour-research/story-FwphDFkSE6JoXB3RRajX1J.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26961342
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/74394650.pdf
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/continuity-of-cannabis-use-and-violent-offending-over-the-life-course/F8E66EC005BDA73865872BD1F398A567
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1541204014559524
The Effectiveness of the Drug war
While it is obvious that decriminalization or legalization will not lower crime rates and that drug users contribute heavily to crime rates, and therefore higher drug use rates will contribute to higher crime rates, it is also prudent to analyze the effect of the drug war itself. Many consider the drug war to in some way be responsible for a spike in violence or the spike in violence, that it caused or causes this violence, as in comparison to the drug use itself. While partially disproved by the fact drug actually do cause more violent crime and decriminalization often leads to higher crime rates, we can analyze the before and after of the drug war's implementation to see if it has had a positive impact. One contribution to these myths is often the inability to easily dispel the narrative crafted by many in major media positions. Movies in hollywood or news articles often try and pin the blame on the drug war or drug enforcement laws themselves, and due the the lack of an as-powerful way to distribute the counter narrative to the general populace, the myth of the failing drug war persists. In reality, despite the drug war, violent crime in the U.S. and elsewhere is falling, and in places or case where drugs are legalized or decriminalized, violent crime is actually rising.
In the U.S., despite the fact the drug war, a term coined to deride president Ronald Reagan's and Richard Nixon's plans to decrease drug use, has been suggested to be responsible for a rise in violent crime, since these measures have been implemented violent crime has actually gone down. Drug use and violent crime rates have been closely connected for many decdes, with less drug use correlating with lower crime rates, and lower violent crime rates correlating with a renewed emphasis on enforcing drug laws. Since Ronald Reagan's drug enforcement act of 198x, violent crime has fallen by nearly 250%, or dropped from x to x, indicating that in fact violent crime has fallen in the U.S. since the measures were implemented. Contrary to common belief, violent crime is actually falling in the U.S., particularly gun crime, despite the perception by many, confirmed by the study as well, that it is in fact increasing. Violent crime rates are decreasing and have been since the implementation of the drug war, and there is a direct cuasitive link that reducing drug use will reduce violent crime. For example, since the drug war's implementation, most forms of drug use have fallen, such as cocaine or barbiturate use, where as legalized drugs, such as opiods or marijuana, have risen. Drugs that are not as heavily regulated have increased in use, such as marijuana, where as drugs that are more heavily regulated such as cocaine, have fallen. The greater emphasis on enforcing existing drug laws has resulted in lessened use, and decreased enforcement, such as with Obama choosing not to federally regulate marijuana use, and several states such as Colorado legalizing it, or California legalizing it for medical use, has lead to greater use, and greater violent crime in these states. In Colorado violent crime has increased by x, in comparison to x and x for x, while violent crime in general has fallen for the nation at large. Decriminalizing or legalizing drugs has concurrently resulted in higher violent crime rates as well as greater drug use rates, not only in other countries but in the U.S., where as states that have not legalized it are seeing a drop in violent crime. Teen use, which is still illegal, has doubled in states which legalized it for recreational or medical marijuana use, indicating that the higher availability is contributing to greater illicit use. The opiod crisis, largely from legal drugs, is one of the largest healthcare crises facing the nation, which is largely facilitated by the easy access to drugs.
In Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras and El Salvador, after drug legalization crime rates have sky rocketed, in comparison to X and X and X where it has dropped. The impact of legalization is obvious, with harsher drug enforcement laws resulting in less drug use, and softer drug enforcement laws or none at all resulting in greater use. While the use of certain drugs such as marijuana or opiods is often linked to a failure of the drug war, it is actually prove of it's effectiveness. When the drug war was stopped against marijuana, it's use and violent crime increased, while when it was continued against it, violent crime decreased. Violent crime actually has decreased because of the drug war, and in it's absence has decreased. This is definite evidence that the drug war is actually working, and that the permissive of drug use has a net negative effect on society. Drugs also only make up a small fraction of the revenue generated by international organized criminal organizations. Of the 870 billion dollars generated by criminal activity by organized crime, illicit drug sales only make up approximately 320 billion, or 36.9% of their revenue. Violent crime, property offenses, and other smuggling crimes often make up the bulk of their revenue, and violent criminal groups have shown a proclivity towards increasing violence when they can no longer make money from non-violent crimes like selling drugs, such as in Mexico. While keeping drugs illegal to appease the cartels may not be enough of a justification, it nonetheless is further proof that legalizing drugs will not reduce crime rates. As only a small portion of drugs, such as marijuana, is likely to be legalized (representing 40 billion dollars or approximately 5% of their revenue), this impact is likely going to be lower, and even with full legalization black markets will still exist, either to sale to children or to avoid taxes. As children under 21 or 18 cannot legally consume drugs but are often among the biggest consumers of these drugs, an illicit market for underage use is likely to always exist, such as with the heavy prevalence of alcohol use among minors, or marijuana and other drug use among high school students, with nearly half reporting to have tried marijuana, and a quarter cocaine. The simple reality is that there will always be a profitable market for drugs even if legalized for adults, and to avoid taxes. In New York, illegal cigarette sales is a nearly 5 billion dollar trade, designed to avoid the high, 200% tax rate on the drugs in the city. With high taxes will come those invariably trying to avoid this taxation, and thus a black market for drugs. Therefore even total legalization would only partially cut in to the profits of organized crime, likely not enough to defeat them. In essence, legalizing drugs would not stop the cartels, only force them to turn to violent crime to continue making their revenue, sometimes even against legal drug vendors. Ending the drug war obviously won't stop cartels or reduce the mental impairment from drugs themselves, and thus would not lower violent crime rates.
Another key argument made against the drug war is not it's lack of effectiveness, but it's negative impact on society by being overly harsh in it's punitive measures. Among these is the idea that the drug war largely fills prisons with non-violent drug offenders, who wouldn't be in prison if drugs were not made illegal. While there is some arguments to be made in the favor of an emphasis on rehabilitation, most of those incarcerated in the justice system are not in primarily for drug offenses. 53.8% of those in U.S. prisons and jail were incarcerated for violent offenses, while 18.8% are in prison for property or theft offenses, and 16.3% were in prison for drug offenses. [1] Of those in prison for drug offenses, only 3.7% were in prison for possession alone, usually due to the possession of incredibly large volumes, with the majority of drug offenses being for using a drug while committing another crime, be it violent offenses, drug trafficking, drug production, intoxication while driving or other similar crimes. A very small percent of criminals are in prison or jail for small time drug offenses, or simply using the drug, typically requiring extensive repeat use or external crimes associated with it's use. Part of the confusion comes from the statistics from the federal Bureau of prison in comparison to the total figures; state and local prisons and jails hold the majority of the 2.4 million U.S. prison population, while federal prisons only hold approximatively 200,000. Therefore federal figures are a small overall fraction of the total figures, and therefore do not represent the total prison population.
Nonetheless, there is still an argument to be made for an emphasis on rehabilitation over incarceration. While if an individual refuses to be rehabilitated incarceration may be the only recourse, rehabilitation is generally a more lenient approach, that is less punitive and harsh, allowing for softer treatment of drug uses. State mandated rehabilitation therefore would be a much nicer way of reducing drug use, rather than incarceration, and likely would cost less than imprisonment, which stands at approximately 30,000x per criminal, in comparison to about 5,000-10,000 for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation has also proven to be more successful in reducing use rates than incarceration, and as with lower use rates would come lower crime rates. x amount etc. Therefore, a strong argument can be made for rehabilitation, to be more kind, lower crime rates more and cost us less money, however likely not for legalization or a total stop on enforcing drug laws outright.
The final argument that is made about drug legalization is by a comparison of alcohol prohibition.
Common health effects
Probably the most damaging effect of drug use, other than violent crime, is the effect on the health of the general population. While higher crime rates represent an injustice to the population, and infringes on other's rights to safety, the health impact is by far more severe in terms of total figures, with more deaths and injuries resulting from the negative health consequences than from violent crimes. Accidents, suicide and other self inflicted injuries are often more common than injuries or deaths from violent crimes, with a mere 15,000 homicides in 2016 in comparison to approximately 150,000 accidental deaths, with the figure ranging annually depending on the year. Car accidents etc. x percent suicidal people.
Health problems relating from drug use is even higher than this, for both illicit and illicit drug use. Even legal drugs, such as cigarettes, contributes heavily as a cause of death and drives up medical costs, especially for the average tax payer who often must pay for these medical bills. 480,000 people die a year from cigarettes, out of 2.6 million total deaths, or 18.5%, and smokers tend to die early and consume a disproportionate amount of government funded health resources. It costs the U.S. government approximately x billion dollars per year, or x percent out of 820 billion dollars annually for cigarettes alone, far greater than the slight increase in tax revenue from cigarette sales, or x billion per year. Alcohol and opiod use similarly take up large portions of the U.S. healthcare system, and cost the U.S. population far more in health and financial problems Drug dependence was linked as a primary cause to poverty, with x percent of those in poverty being heavy drug users, with drugs either putting large financial constraints on users or impairing their ability to work effectively. X percent of homeless people were drug users, along with x percent of the mentally ill, and x percent of suicidal people, suggesting that drugs have a fairly negative impact on an individuals overall well being and mental state, and concurrently their ability to hold down a job or lead a normal family life. In poor urban environments, such as Detroit or Chicago, violent crime was much higher among the white and black population standing at x, and drug use correlated directly with higher violent crime rates and single parent households, with x percent of the population having a single parent household, vs. x percent of criminals being from a single parent household.
Marijuana in particular is generally more dangerous than many people perceive it to be, even being more deadly than cigarettes in some way. While the overdose rate of marijuana and cigarettes are quite low, their chance to cause cancer or heart disease and other related health problems is quite high, particularly lung disease. Marijuana use resulted in a tripling of the likelihood of heart disease or a 3-fold higher risk in mortality, and a 4.8 times higher rate to suffer from a heart attack while using marijuana, rates higher than from cigarette use. [1][2][3] Lung disease also increased beyond the ordinary population, and marijuana smoke has been found to be as likely to cause cancer and lung disease as cigarette smoke, or x amount above the general population. There are approximately 30,000 lung disease deaths annually from marijuana, far more than the 2,000 alcohol overdose deaths per year. Cancer rates also increased, to x percent. Exact figures are hard to tally, but between x and x thousand deaths are believed to be from marijuana use. Among drug users at large, for all drugs, the death rate was also much higher, shaving as much as 10-25 years off the life of the users. [4] All of these problems were made wore by obesity, which has also been shown to magnify the impact of drug use dramatically, with obesity rates being much higher in the U.S. (38%) than much of the rest of the world (OECD average: 16%). As drug use often results in a more sedentary lifestyle, due to the impact on the lungs and heart and cognitive impairment (particularly when drunk or high), weight gain was often the result of drug use, in addition to hormonal fluctuations caused by some drugs, compounding the issue further. Furthermore heart disease and cancer were the leading causes of death in the United States, with approximately 600,000 deaths from heart disease and cancer annually, and an additional 400,000 deaths from heart disease related symptoms such as nephrotic kidney disease or lower respiratory disease, resulting in approximately 65% of the 2.6 million deaths annually in the United States. A doubling or tripling of the chance to get heart disease by the average citizen would have a devastating impact on public health, and represents a national security issue.
Marijuana also cannot cure cancer, contrary to some belief. Even pro-marijuana legalizing organizations and articles, such as x and x, report from the same medical study, which says "X-marijuna can't cure cancer". According to the study, x
Should we regulate drugs?
A question proposed after this data is, should we regulate these drugs? The negative health effects on society, combined with the higher accident and crime rate, inflicts a massive human loss, as well as financial one when policing the higher crime, rehabilitating drug users, and the health problems that result from drug use. While obviously a negative to society, there still remains the question, should we regulate drugs, and if so, to what extent and how? In my opinion, the simple answer is yes, we should regulate drugs, however the more complex answer is that the system should shift from a more punitive role to a more rehabilitative one. While it is true that the drug war has largely been effective, it would be more effective and burden the average citizen less if rehabilitation was more of an emphasis, even state-mandated rehabilitation, as opposed to mass incarceration. Many drug users go right back to using as soon as they are out, with a lower effectiveness of treating drug users than rehabilitation methods, and therefore court-ordered rehabilitation, perhaps encouraged by the threat of incarceration, should be the focus instead. Drug use is a net negative to society in many ways, from economic productivity, to financial costs to the average tax payer, to health and crime related issues, and therefore should not be encouraged. It is one thing to take a more compassionate role in trying to treat drug use addiction, and it is another entirely to completely ignore it. We should not be permissive, but rather use a gentler hand to prevent the problem of heavy drug use.
On the question of freedom, one has to ask how much freedom an individual can be given before it begins to infringe upon the freedom and safety of others. Most would agree that nuclear weapons should not be in the hands of citizens, as would they tanks or military aircraft, as the destructive damage they can inflict, even if used rarely, would outweigh the benefit to self defense and recreation. One could not reasonably hop in their tank in the middle of the night if a burglary occurred, and if they somehow did would destroy their own home or possibly kill them families or neighbors in the pursuit, causing too much collateral damage even if somehow used effectively. In the pursuit of self defense, a tank would likely be not only overboard, but useless, and too destructive even if used properly. Similarly these weapons if available on the open market could easily fall in to the wrong hands, with for example Iran or North korea likely to buy nuclear weapons if they could be readily purchased on the general market, making the proliferation risk to our enemies and other rogue entities too grave. Almost all people draw a limit somewhere as to where what items should be permitted to society, given the damage they can cause, and therefore the question that needs to be asked is how destructive is the object in relation to what it provides to society. Drugs are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, and 10's of thousands of murders, violent crimes and accidents which put even non-drug users at risk, which is far more injuries and deaths than firearms, cars, or other heavily regulated objects inflict. If the damage caused to society is too great, and the benefit from it too low, does it warrant regulation? In general most would agree yes purely on the basis of numbers, but it is likely many will make an exception for their preferred hobby, despite the damage it causes. However I would ask readers to seriously consider this damage and impact on society, and ask themselves if the minor benefit of the temporary gratification that comes from drug use are worth the high crime and health problems we would and even currently experience. Is the price in human life, physical capital, tax money, and the quality of life of the average citizen worth the minor, if not nearly non-existent benefit that comes from drug use? In my opinion it is not, however the choice is up to the citizen, hopefully who will be informed enough to make the right decision for themselves.
TL;DR Or in conclusion
Drugs obviously have an impact on behavior, which can often lead to violence, car accidents, health problems, or other harmful effects on society. Society should consider and weigh these risks before legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and put in measures (such as more effective law enforcement and rehabilitation clinics), before legalizing them. The various myths about how the drug war or other potential causes are really responsible for crime are easily refuted, and unfortunately these myths persist in society despite this. Above all I would urge caution before nonchalantly legalizing all drugs merely believing they are harmless, as overwhelming evidence to the contrary exists that shows otherwise.
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