Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading
Review: Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina is an eye-opening journey into the deep politics of U.S. intervention in developing and third-world nations. Scott illuminates the connection between American business interests and American foreign policy with a factual depth that leaves little room for doubt. Scott also documents the CIA involvement--often via drug proxies--in furthering covert American interests. The details and references contained within the text add immeasurably to what is already an incredibly valuable and insightful history. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy and the military conflicts that have arisen out of American business interests on foreign soil.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading
Review: Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina is an eye-opening journey into the deep politics of U.S. intervention in developing and third-world nations. Scott illuminates the connection between American business interests and American foreign policy with a factual depth that leaves little room for doubt. Scott also documents the CIA involvement--often via drug proxies--in furthering covert American interests. The details and references contained within the text add immeasurably to what is already an incredibly valuable and insightful history. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy and the military conflicts that have arisen out of American business interests on foreign soil.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Analysis
Review: Drugs, Oil, and War:

In this brilliant book, Peter Dale Scott shows how since World War Two the CIA has recurrently used drug-trafficking allies against its enemies in oil-rich areas of the Third World, and how this has contributed to a staggering increase in the global drug traffic. He traces this practice back to the surprising connection in 1950 between the responsible CIA officer and Meyer Lansky's chief money-laundering bank. He warns that America's recent restoration of the drug traffic in Afghanistan will help fuel an increased wave of terrorism in the region and the world.

Rating:
Summary: The Truth that Hurts
Review: Like veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whom McCarthyites dubbed "prematurely anti-Fascist" for fighting against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Peter Dale Scott has long been ahead of the pack on the parapolitical underpinnings of US foreign policy. Those desiring to catch up - and thereby plug the mega-gap between Bush II rhetoric and reality - will be wise to start by reading Scott's latest book, "Drugs, Oil and War." Though he focusses on Indochina, Colombia and Afghanistan, lessons Washington learned there - and forgot - are being retaught today in Iraq.

Rating:
Summary: Don't be deceived
Review: Peter Dale Scott is a highly regarded author with a long history of outstanding work. To this end, I bought this book because of my strong interest in Colombia and was attracted by the title of the book, "Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina." I would have never bothered to buy this book if I knew that nearly half of it is a rehash of Scott's 1972 publication, "The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War."

Part I, "Afghanistan, Heroin, and Oil (2002) and Part II, "Colombia, Cocaine, and Oil (2001) is good. Scott makes some excellent observations about paramilitary relationships.
Moreover, he carefully explains how paramilitary forces in Afghanistan and Colombia are heavily involved in drug trafficking. Nevertheless, the narrative of this book is coated in left of center rhetoric...and as a political moderate I found some theories lacked intellectual merit. To his credit, Scott's provides professionally prepared footnotes and bibliography.

Bert Ruiz