Introduction: Deep History and the Global Drug Connection
Part I: Overview
Chapter 1: Sanctioned Violence, the Dominance Machine, and the
Overworld
Part II: The CIA and Drugs Abroad
Chapter 2: Mexico, Drugs, the DFS, and the United States
Chapter 3: Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand
and Burma
Chapter 4: Rollback, PARU, and Laos: Preparing for Offensive
War
Chapter 5: Laos: Financing a War by Drugs
Chapter 6: The War on Drugs in Asia: A Phony War with Real
Casualties
Part III: Deep Events and the Drug Connection at Home
Chapter 7: The CIA, the Global Drug Connection, and Terrorism
Chapter 8: Inside the War Machine: The Profiteers from Enduring
Violence
Chapter 9: 9/11 and the American Tradition of Engineered Deep
Events
Part IV: America and Afghanistan Today
Chapter 10: Obama and Afghanistan: America's Drug-Corrupted War
Chapter 11: Conclusion: The War Machine and the Deep Politics of
Drugs
Final Words
Bibliography
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading political analyst and poet. His most recent books are The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11 and the Deep Politics of War, and Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. He has been awarded the Lannan Poetry Award, and former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass wrote that Scott's Coming to Jakarta "is the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time." His website can be found at www.peterdalescott.net
In Scott's view, the American military-industrial complex so feared
by Eisenhower has grown into a military-industrial-corporate
behemoth. This 'overclass,' often functioning independently from
the official elected government, has spearheaded countless actions
that it perceives to be in the best interest of perpetuating
American hegemony. With exhaustive research and extremely
persuasive arguments, Scott seeks to prove that the funding and
motivation behind America's assertion of global supremacy can be
traced to drugs. Drug money fueled American actions in Laos and
Vietnam during the Cold War, American support of the mujahedeen in
Afghanistan in the '80s, and defines American political action in
Latin America and present-day Afghanistan. By looking at covert
activity and recorded history through the lens of American global
dominance, Scott makes a terrifyingly compelling case; he asks
readers to consider what actions taken in the last fifty years have
not benefited America's military-industrial complex, such an
integral part of the global economy. . . . [His] carefully
structured arguments never fail to interest or disturb.
*Publishers Weekly, Starred Review*
Scott has written a provocative account of CIA machinations and
their link to spikes in global drug production, war, and terrorism.
His chapters on Thailand and the Far East are especially
well-grounded and of great use to historians. . . . [Scott] is a
creative thinker who deserves credit for delving into the
netherworld of clandestine operations and global corruption which
most academics choose to ignore. . . . At his core, Scott is an
idealist who believes that in exposing the sinister forces
accounting for the spread of unnecessary violence, an aroused
citizenry can mobilize to rein them in. The stakes today are
especially high, because if left unchecked, the pattern of warfare
and destabilization which Scott describes may lead to a global
confrontation of truly catastrophic proportions as well as
irreversible environmental damage and the economic bankruptcy of
the United States.
*History News Network*
There are certain books that, once read, alter one’s mind
permanently. This is such a book. Naïve readers and patriots
beware: You will never think about the world in the same way after
you have read just the first two chapters of American War
Machine.
*The Erowid Review*
American War Machine explains how one of the principal techniques
of [commandeering power in the United States by secret,
undemocratic means] has been the CIA’s utilization of the drug
traffic to combat communism, the governments and movements of the
left, and, in our time, to maintain American supremacy in the
world. . . . The demonstration is, one could say, stupefying. . . .
This book reads like a real thriller filled with twists and
suspense; a thriller for which one does not, yet, know the end. But
can there be an end? In this world where the honest citizen is
overwhelmed by mountains of data, this book must absolutely be read
because it allows us to understand to what degree we have been so
manipulated and misinformed. . . . [A] solid and convincing
document, the mind-blowing reading of which truly leads to original
and non-conformist elements of reflection, indispensable for
attempting to understand the world which surrounds us, and for
trying to discern where it is going.
*Revue Défense Nationale*
Peter Dale Scott has published a book of stunning richness. . . . I
know of no study that so precisely captures a period as dangerous
as our own. . . . Indeed, empires, kingdoms, and republics have
their state secrets, but when the entire state becomes a secret,
when in so-called democratic nations everything is decided without
the people, elections themselves being open to doubt, it is
necessary that one escape from the fear of ordinary people in the
presence of the powerful and try to understand where these
decisions are trending that are contrary to our interest. . . .
Peter Dale Scott is the Tocqueville of this era, helping us
understand how we are sliding into a world that can only be
revolutionary if it wishes to survive. . . . Buy this book, read
it, make it known.
*Agoravox*
What I like most about Peter Dale Scott are his fierce intellectual
curiosity, his willingness to investigate radioactive topics, and
his tireless commitment to unearthing the truth. Over the years, he
has done more than almost anyone to discover and chronicle the
forces that covertly shape our policies. American War Machine may
be his greatest work yet.
*Russ Baker, award-winning investigative journalist and author of
Family of Secrets*
Peter Dale Scott is our most fearless and illuminating chronicler
of the lethal and mysterious web of unaccountable violence linking
government to organized crime, the drug trade, state terror, and
eventuating in disastrous wars. Read this extraordinary book to
understand why this country finds itself gridlocked in Afghanistan,
yet another costly quagmire, because a small cabal at the top is
still dedicated to the mirage of American global dominance.
*Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law
Emeritus, Princeton University*
Peter Dale Scott writes with his inimitable eloquence about the
intersection between U.S. covert operations and international
narcotics trafficking and its destructive undermining of American
democracy. The past half-century of drug politics—and the country’s
complicit acceptance of the violence it has spawned—is an ominous
portent for our present and future. American War Machine should be
required reading for anyone who wants to understand the upper- and
underworld marriage that drives contemporary foreign policy.
*Sally Denton, author of The Bluegrass Conspiracy*
Peter Dale Scott flashes a bright light on a dark illicit world of
lowly thugs and high-placed political and moneyed cabals.
Thoroughly researched and deeply informed, this book makes for an
intriguing read.
*Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism and God and His
Demons*
I said of Scott's last brilliant take on this subject, Drugs, Oil
and War, that 'It makes most academic and journalistic explanations
of our past and current interventions read like government
propaganda written for children.' Now Scott has written an even
better book. Read it!
*Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the
Pentagon Papers*
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