Cosmic Irony

I received a comment from a reader in my previous blog entry. This is my answer. Seeing as how it was turning out to be so long, I decided to respond as a blog. I thank her for her input, although I disagree.

I know the biggest argument to staying in Iraq is that the war will be brought home. So I’m expecting rafts full of Iraqis jumping onto the beaches when we finally leave. I’ll have my club ready.

So, we know that the civil war in Iraq was created by years of internal conflict in the Middle East. (What else is new? The place has been full of dissension for two thousand years). And when we went over there, we picked a side and that is why the other side is shooting at us. I’ll bet you twenty bucks that if we left, they would keep shooting eachother, and would no longer have Americans to kill. If we are worried about attacks on the US, we can rest assured that we are doing so well at preventing attacks, we are even torturing people like Maher Arar, among others. Look him up.

Because, you see, the Terrorists we are supposed to be fighting are not just in Iraq. In fact, we practically invited Al Qaeda there by destabilizing the country. So why are we concentrating all our effort on Iraq if the majority of Al Qaeda is in other countries? I agree that we should leave a force in Iraq to counter Al Qaeda, but fighting someone else’s civil war is not helping at all. We could be using our resources more wisely. A change of course is overdue.

Soldiers in boot camp are saying we need to be in Iraq. Of course the soldiers are going to support the war. They signed up, remember? They wouldn’t have signed up if they didn’t. But I’ve talked to some soldiers as well, and on returning, they have told me that they can’t wait for their brothers to come home and that it’s useless for us to be in Iraq when we could be better dealing with terrorism.

At home, we have a War on Drugs. We are fighting the symptom of a deeply rooted socio-economic problem and psychological illness. This problem is not as simple as “If we allow drug users to have as much as they want they will eventually die and then they will lose cliental. It also will reduce the earths population and solve that issue as well”. I know my reader may be angry at the levity of the drug situation, but I think that is a little harsh. The situation is more complicated than that.

First of all, there is a reaction in the brain that occurs when a person does drugs. Also, there is a genetic flaw that causes a predisposition to drug and alcohol abuse. Not only that, but poverty creates the kind of stress that breeds a need to escape. So all these factors can be solved if we are willing to invest in treatment.

The private prison system is the biggest lobby in California. Why would they want to help people rehabilitate if they are making money keeping people on the inside?

There is no such thing as corrections in the corrections system, so of course we see drug addicts hit the streets after release. Not only that, but they are paroled into the very same streets that they were caught in and if they leave without jumping through months of hoops, it is called absconding.

With poor public transportation and little instruction, they are told to show up once a week at a parole office and jump through more hoops. I have personally known parolees, clean for a significant amount of time, sent back on a violation for no other reason than some technicality.

Parolees are instructed to meet with a PO during normal business hours, so they can’t really have a job during that time, right? (How does this sound? “Hey boss, can I have some time off to meet with my PO? Thanks”). Most places won’t touch a person with a felony for at least five years, if at all. Not only that, but few are given vocational rehab. Almost all inmates did not have parents that worked consistently, so they have no example to live by. This is why voc rehab is important. Nor have they been equipped with the upbringing necessary for a person to respond to life in a stable, well-balanced way. Children learn what they see. This is why intense counseling should also be given to parolees, along with the voc rehab.

So, being forced to have a job and to jump through these hoops without any help whatsoever, why should they even try? They spit and it’s back to prison. What a crap shoot.

This doesn’t just start at the adult level. If a person is a minor in a poor, black neighborhood and is caught past curfew, chances are he or she will be taken to Juvenile hall, whereas a white, suburban minor would be taken home. This is fact. So, with an early start in a system that is nearly impossible to escape, no education, psychiatric help, or a way out of the situation that temps them to use or deal again, they don’t really have a whole lotta help.

I’m not saying all criminals would be miraculously saved by a new approach in corrections, but a whole lot of them would benefit. If you look at the success of the programs that teach inmates to raise horses, work in fire camps, brush the animals at the humane society and such, there is no reason not to take a healing approach to corrections, instead of a holding approach.

People may shout, “But there are rehab programs that some parolees are given an opportunity to attend and they fail drug tests half-way through!” So true. But it takes a smoker an average of SEVEN times to finally kick nicotine. Do we give up on smokers after only one or two tries?

People also shout, “It is their fault they did drugs in the first place!” But in the subculture they live in, this is a way of life. If a person got an ulcer for drinking too much coffee, would we shout, “But he tried coffee in the first place!” We have to change the culture that fosters drug addiction through prevention and education, as well as rehab.

I’ve known too many people on the front lines. The ones that work in the rehabs and the clinics. I’ve known too many that have fallen through the cracks and have been sent back. I also know that even if a person gets sent back to prison, him and people closet to him now know about recovery where many have never even heard of the twelve steps before. This spreading the word is not given credit as a success because it is too hard to trace and document. I’ve known people that have walked into the rooms of twelve step recovery because they heard about it from someone who was sent to the meeting by the judge.

Not only all this, but I have seen those miracles that stay clean and sober. The heroine addict with two strikes that owns his own business and his own home. The ex-prostitute with a loving family and a new college education. The angry, the lonely, the withdrawn, the burnt, the hopeless- all that have become more than society would have EVER hoped for them to be. The ones on which we had given up.

No, we shouldn’t just let them die. We help create them when we turn our heads in ignorance and write the problem off as hopeless.