American War Machine

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

• Introduction: Deep History and the Global Drug ConnectionPart I: OverviewChapter 1: Sanctioned Violence, the Dominance Machine, and the OverworldPart II: The CIA and Drugs AbroadChapter 2: Mexico, Drugs, the DFS, and the United StatesChapter 3: Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and BurmaChapter 4: Rollback, PARU, and Laos: Preparing for Offensive WarChapter 5: Laos: Financing a War by DrugsChapter 6: The War on Drugs in Asia: A Phony War with Real CasualtiesPart III: Deep Events and the Drug Connection at HomeChapter 7: The CIA, the Global Drug Connection, and TerrorismChapter 8: Inside the War Machine: The Profiteers from Enduring ViolenceChapter 9: 9/11 and the American Tradition of Engineered Deep EventsPart IV: America and Afghanistan TodayChapter 10: Obama and Afghanistan: America's Drug-Corrupted WarChapter 11: Conclusion: The War Machine and the Deep Politics of DrugsFinal WordsBibliography

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.