Afghanistan Aff
AC Ethnic Strife Advantage
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- South and Central Asia constitute a part of the world where a well-designed American strategy might help avoid crises or catastrophe
- Insecurity has led the states of the region to seek weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and conventional arms. It has also led them toward policies which undercut the security of their neighbors.
- Ending the war on drugs would bankrupt warring factions Hari 9
- he may well have two collapsed and hemorrhaging countries on his hands. The first
- The U.S. reacted by declaring "war on opium."
- Busting top traffickers doesnt work, since others
- Legalizing and regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business.
1AC Ethnic Strife AdvantageCentral Asian Instability causes nuclear war Ahrari 9 ( Eshan-, professor of national security and strategy @ Armed Forces Staff College, 1 , August, online, p. 41 www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/Pubs/display.cfm?pubID=112) ET South and Central Asia constitute a part of the world where a well-designed American strategy might help avoid crises or catastrophe. The U.S. military would provide only one component of such a strategy, and a secondary one at that, but has an important role to play through engagement activities and regional confidence-building. Insecurity has led the states of the region to seek weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and conventional arms. It has also led them toward policies which undercut the security of their neighbors. If such activities continue, the result could be increased terrorism, humanitarian disasters, continued low-level conflict and potentially even major regional war or a thermonuclear exchange. A shift away from this pattern could allow the states of the region to become solid economic and political partners for the United States, thus representing a gain for all concerned. Ending the war on drugs would bankrupt warring factions Hari 9 (Johann, staff writer for The Independent, The Huffington Post, Feb 10-9) ET With the global economy collapsing all around us, the last issue President Barack Obama wants to talk about is the ongoing War on Drugs. But if he doesn't -- and fast -- he may well have two collapsed and hemorrhaging countries on his hands. The first lies in the distant mountains of Afghanistan. The second is right next door, on the other side of the Rio Grande. Here's a starter-for-ten about where this war has led us. Where in the world are you most likely to be beheaded? Where are the severed craniums of police officers being found week after week in the streets, pinned to bloody notes that tell their colleagues: "This is so that you learn respect"? Where are hand grenades being tossed into crowds to intimidate the public into shutting up? Which country was just named by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as the most likely after Pakistan to suffer a "rapid and sudden collapse"? Most of us would guess Iraq. The answer is Mexico. The death toll in Tijuana today is higher than in Baghdad. The story of how this came to happen is the story of this war -- and why it will have to end, soon. When you criminalize a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from pharmacists and doctors to armed criminal gangs. In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up -- and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of London or Los Angeles, where teenage gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 percent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process on a countrywide scale, and you have Mexico and Afghanistan today. Drugs syndicates control eight percent of global GDP -- which means they have greater resources than many national armies. They own helicopters and submarines and they can afford to spread the woodworm of corruption through poor countries, right to the top. Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the U.S. has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia's coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It's known as the "balloon effect": press down in one place, and the air rushes to another. When I was last there in 2006, I saw the drug violence taking off and warned that the murder rate was going to skyrocket- - but I didn't imagine it would reach this scale. In 2007, more than 2,000 people were killed. In 2008, it was more than 5,400 people. The victims range from a pregnant woman washing her car to a four year-old child to a family in the "wrong" house watching television. Today, 70 percent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels. The cartels offer Mexican police and politicians a choice: plato o ploma. Silver or lead. Take a bribe, or take a bullet. The Interior Secretary, Juan Camilo Mourino, admits that the cartels have so corrupted the police they can't guarantee the safety of informers or the general public any more. The former U.S. drug agency director Barry McCaffrey says Mexico is "not confronting dangerous criminality -- it is fighting for its survival against narco-terrorists." Within five years, he said, it will be a narco-state controlled by the cartels. So the U.S. is trying to militarize the attack on the cartels in Mexico, offering tanks, helicopters and hard cash. The same process has occurred in Afghanistan. After the toppling of the Taliban, the country's bitterly poor farmers turned to the only cash crop that earns them enough to keep their kids alive: opium. It now makes up 50 percent of the country's GDP. The drug cartels have a far bigger budget than the elected government, so they have left the young democracy, police force and army riddled with corruption and virtually useless. The U.S. reacted by declaring "war on opium." The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NATO Commander has ordered his troops to "kill all opium dealers." Seeing their main crop destroyed and their families killed, many have turned back to the Taliban in rage. The drug war has brought the Taliban back to life. What is the alternative? Terry Nelson was one of the America's leading federal agents tackling drug cartels for over thirty years. He discovered the hard way that the current tactics are useless. "Busting top traffickers doesn't work, since others just do battle to replace them," he explains. A crackdown simply produces more violence, as an endless pool of young men hungry for the profits step into the vacuum and fight off their rivals. Nelson concluded there is an alternative: "Legalizing and regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business. It's the one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?" Of course, the day after legalization, a majority of gangsters will not suddenly open organic food shops and join the Hare Krishnas. But their profit margins will collapse as their customers go to off-licenses and chemists rather than to them. The incentives for going into crime and staying there will be decimated. Norm Stamper, the former head of the Seattle Police Department, says plainly: "Regulated legalization of all drugs will drive drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive. We don't have to speculate about these effects; we can look at the last time prohibition ended. When alcohol was criminalized in the US, the murder rate soared. The year it was legalized, the number of murders fell off a cliff -- and continued to drop for the next ten years. (Rates of alcoholism remained the same; deaths from alcohol poisoning declined dramatically as beer replaced moonshine.) Just as Al Capone was bankrupted by legalizing alcohol, we now have a chance to bankrupt the Mexican cartels, the Taliban, the Bloods and the Crips, and the gangs that are shooting their way across world -- before they cause the collapse of two countries. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. 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