To be fair, I think you're blaming the wrong agency here. The Drug Enforcement Administration is going to do everything it can to prosecute as many drug violations as they can. That's their charter.
You should instead convince legislators to make drugs less illegal, and use the police resources for something else. If the Preventing Kids From Being Kidnapped Administration was as well-funded as the DEA, these agents would be coming up with clever ways to catch predators instead.
Yes, and the charter you just gave is is evil. Fundamentally evil. Pure evil even.
"...do everything it can to prosecute as many drug violations as they can." That makes no mention of improving society. Or protecting society. Or providing valuable services to the citizens of society. Nor does it even make mention of the validity of the violations in question. Who cares if the violations in question are actually true. Truth and justice have nothing to do with the charter!
So no, the DEA deserves to be perfectly square in the crosshairs of blame. Along with many other agencies and governmental organizations.
It's called the "Drug Enforcement Agency." It's sole purpose is to enforce drug laws, not to make drug policy. Like other agencies, it was created to enforce the policies enacted by politicians (Congresscritters and Senators). Blame the politicians, not the agencies.
Pardon my language, but fuck that. Members of the DEA are responsible for their own actions with respect to how they uphold those laws. They hold prosecutorial discretion and they may be rightly judged for how they exercise that privilege. Some judge may have ruled parallel construction, amongst other things, as legal but that doesn't mean it's moral or ethical.
I'm happy to blame congress and others for creating the terrible policy, but that doesn't let the DEA off the hook for the practices they're describing here.
An agency or officer that's justifying their actions as "enforcing the law" had better be talking about the every bit as important and legitimate laws that limit their activities and powers, as well as the criminal statutes.
Otherwise, they're doing something else besides law enforcement.
It's called the "Rape Creation Agency" It's sole purpose is to rape people, not to make rape policy. Like other agencies, it was created to enforce the policies enacted by politicians (Congresscritters and Senators). Blame the politicians, not the agencies.
I know it seems like a straw man but I just wish to show that your reasoning isn't quite sound.
> It's called "Vernichtungslager" / "Concentration Camps", their whole purpose is the legal killing of undesirables, you're really venting your anger at the wrong agency here. They're just doing the job they were hired for.
No, not the laws around drugs right now — the concept of laws around drugs. Because if it's just the current laws that are problematic, then it is indeed the laws that are the problem, not the agency.
This is not comparable to a hypothetical Rape Creation Agency, which is problematic in and of itself because we do not approve of rape under any circumstances and there are no laws that could be changed to make such an agency acceptable. The analogy is not valid for making that particular point.
The drug laws are Jim Crow laws, version 2.0 (now with added resiliency!) They were created for exactly the same racist reasons. The laws are evil, and those who voluntarily sign on to enforce them are evil.
The DEA isn't staffed by people who were drafted, they all chose to involve themselves. Each individual member of the DEA is free to refuse to participate, but they instead choose to participate. We can and should judge them for that.
It has everything to do with what you are talking about.
You said: "Because if it's just the current laws that are problematic, then it is indeed the laws that are the problem, not the agency."
But it isn't just the laws that are problematic. The agency itself is problematic (being a construct that exists only because of the problematic laws), and the people who voluntarily work for the agency deserve every ounce of criticism that they get. There is no sense in which the agency is not problematic, both it as an abstract concept and it as a collection of free individuals are part of the problem.
Neither the agency nor the people that comprise are blameless just because they did not write the laws.
> we do not approve of rape under any circumstances
In the U.S. people actively encourage rape in prison as a form of revenge, even an inherent part of incarceration. Especially if the person being incarcerated did something that fits the common definition of "wrong", like robbing someone at gunpoint, carjacking, murder, drug trafficking, or rape. How much sympathy do people usually have for a rapist being raped in prison? Or a child molester?
That's approval waiting for a chance to surface, because someone "deserved it", and it's not even close to being isolated to prisoners or criminals either, that attitude is horrifically common.
This would be empty theorizing. May be you can create an agency and call it Rape Creation Agency and still have laws that would govern it that would not be evil (e.g., for example, for its agents to never do anything, never show up at work and just collect salaries - that'd be actually less evil than the substantial part of currently existing government agencies). But that's a theoretical exercise.
Drug War, on the contrary, is very practical evil existing right now in America. And no amount of theory would change that until the laws that create that evil would be removed and replaced with ones that are not evil.
I don't think you understand logic, the law, or modern society.
Rape is illegal, hence, the legislative branch could not and would not create a "rape agency" to rape people without also making rape legal. Obviously, if they were to do that, the problem is the politicians would make rape legal.
Our duly elected representatives made laws prohibiting drugs, and an agency to enforce those laws. We've had many chances to replace those representatives in the decades since, and have chosen not to replace them with representatives who would remove those laws or water down the enforcement provisions.
Is there a difference between morality and the law?
If our "duly elected representatives" made laws that made rape legal, would that be moral?
If there are 100 people in a room and 51 people vote for the other 49 to become their lunch, is that ok?
What if they made laws that made killing certain ethic groups legal, would that be moral?
What if both of the candidates in a race are for the drug war and I don't have a choice?
Does voting really imply consent? If it does, what if the candidate was lying during the campaign? What if he/she changed their mind about an issue? Do I still imply consent?
You don't even need to bring the prohibition discussion into this. The problem with the DEA isn't their mission or charter, it's that they have convinced themselves along the way that to make an impact, they need to become an intelligence agency and support certain cartels, funnel weapons to them, turn a blind eye on their operations in the USA - this is where they are creating extra harm.
They believe they are the genius third party that is playing cartels against each other, when really the cartel soldiers don't stop working over the weekend and will happily take whatever support the DEA has to offer while shielding the upper echelons.
"The problem with the DEA isn't their mission or charter"
On the contrary, that's the only problem. Once you have an agency mission to violate human rights and the Constitution, all the abuses follow directly.
The problem isn't corrupt behavior from the DEA and drug police. The problem is that prohibition is illegal and unconstitutional and inherently contrary to basic human rights.
You can't create and run an operation to deprive people of their agency, choices, and rights and then conduct that operation in a decent, honest, and civilized manner. That would be self-contradictory; everything the operation does is wrong; doing it well can't make it right.
In fact, the abuses documented in op and widely elsewhere are really not a part of the problem at all. If we had an agency that read people's minds and imprisoned them if they did not love big brother enough, then failures of the mind reading device would be a benefit because at least some people would retain freedom of conscience by accident. Likewise, every time the DEA or drug police kill and imprison innocents, it's good for the country. They would be killing and imprisoning someone no matter what and at least when the victims are innocent, someone out there is retaining his fundamental right to choose what substances to use or not use inside his own body.
> To be fair, I think you're blaming the wrong agency here.
Stop kicking the can. The DEA is part of the problem in that any organization's goal is self-propogation and continued existence to benefit it's membership.
That they were given a corrupt charter doesn't mean they're innocent actors. They are part and parcel of the security state combined with private interests, corrupt legislators, bribed judges and other agencies whose mission has strayed from public benefit to lining their own pockets.
In fact, I wouldn't doubt that given their power, they are increasingly targeted/infiltrated by the very criminal interests they're trying to control - meaning their purpose is skewed for vendetta resolution and clearing out markets for drug cartels (note: HSBC was caught laundering money for the cartels, why would the DEA be less corruptible?).
Well, they may actually believe their propaganda, which just means that their authority (to influence drug policy) extends beyond the bounds of their competence.
And, in turn, the executive branch's job is to enforce the law. Could the current administration do more to scale back the War on Drugs? Possibly. Probably, even. But they are taking some measures, however small. E.g.: [1]
I don't think they are required by law to employ parallel construction, and whatever the hell this redacted technique is. At a certain point even people in the executive branch become responsible for their own actions and decisions.
Executive branch is guilty of enforcing the evil laws, but these evil laws exist and are made more evil (e.g. mandatory sentences, theory of "precursors", etc.) by the legislative branch. So everybody is guilty here.
It seems pretty clear that the culture at DEA is also to blame; there are plenty of other areas of law enforcement which is comparatively reasonable.
The severity of the punishments, and the level of funding, is the fault of congress, but a well-funded DEA which stuck strictly to the law would be a lot better than what we have now. Part of it is that drug smuggling gangs are some of the worst criminals, and putting police agencies in constant contact with them seems to corrupt them (Nietzsche...).
That's what makes them evil. The fact that the evil has been spawned by the act of Congress doesn't make it less evil. It just makes Congress responsible for doing evil.
You should instead convince legislators to make drugs less illegal, and use the police resources for something else. If the Preventing Kids From Being Kidnapped Administration was as well-funded as the DEA, these agents would be coming up with clever ways to catch predators instead.