MEDIA ROOTS — In recent months, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been performing deadly operations in Honduras to combat the War on Drugs.  Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT interviews Professor Adrienne Pine of American University about the most recent DEA slayings in the region.  They discuss the complete disregard for sovereignty, due process and rules of engagement.  

Professor Pine points out that America’s War on Drugs is enhanced by stunting the roots of democracy in Honduras.  She cements this assertion by sharing, “The police and the military forces in Honduras were the forces responsible for carrying out a coup in 2009 and then for violently enforcing it.”  Professor Pine goes on to explain that the U.S. financially supports the Honduran police and military, despite the State Department’s own warnings of widespread corruption among the agencies.  Rather than pulling back from the overt sanctioning of corruption to promote an undercurrent of civilian led democracy, the U.S. continues to fan the flames by inserting military and DEA assets.

DEA Agents out of Control in Honduras

Professor Pine focuses on the origins of the disastrous American foreign policy in Latin America with the Plan Columbia incentives where civilians were murdered and dressed like guerillas to collect U.S. taxpayer funded bounties.  She then compares the U.S. sanctioned murders on foreign soil to the streets of America, where impoverished African-American and Latino-American populations pay a disproportionate price for the failed policies of the Drug War.  

Drawing a correlation from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs, the professor explains how America’s brutal imperial policies are now coming full-circle as the Iraq model is being adopted across Central and South America.  The interview takes an interesting turn as the discussion turns to U.S. government complicity in drug trafficking.  

The total cost of the DEA from 1972 to 2009 exceeds $536 billion.

Chris Martin for Media Roots

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