Clinton's Kind of general
CANNON, CARL M.
Clinton's Kind of General by Carl M. Cannon FOUR YEARS AGO, IN THE FIRST FEW weeks of the Clinton presidency, a three-star general attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was at the White House on...
...Clinton, who campaigned extensively in both Arizona and California— and carried them both—said nothing against either proposition when his words might have changed the minds of voters (McCaffrey did, to no avail...
...McCaffrey took the post in an election year...
...What he didn't take sitting down, however, were the initiatives in Arizona and California that eased the drug laws under the guise of allowing the terminally ill to smoke marijuana as a way of alleviating their suffering...
...For the three-star general she insulted that winter day was Lt...
...McCaffrey is the reason the administration has finally articulated a coherent anti-drug policy, and he is the driving force behind the administration's unexpectedly strong response to two invidious state referenda in Arizona and California that would make it easier for Americans to use illegal drugs...
...The president trusts him," McCurry says...
...At West Point and various war colleges, McCaffrey was known for teaching young officers the absolute need to avoid human-rights abuses in combat...
...While presidents get too much credit—and too much blame—for nearly everything that goes on in the nation's life, there was ample reason in this instance to hold Clinton accountable for the alarming increase in marijuana and other narcotics among America's teenagers...
...Of course, if Clinton had chosen not to trust McCaffrey on this one, that snubbing of the general might have made the 1993 snub seem like a nice walk in the park on a sunny, cloudless day...
...As a young lieutenant, McCaffrey was wounded in battle and sent home...
...200 has the effect of moving all federally categorized Schedule I narcotics—such as LSD, marijuana, and hero-in—into Schedule II...
...In the Army, McCaffrey was known as a demanding officer who traveled easily within the two great cultures, the warrior class and the politically correct bureaucracy...
...McCaffrey scoffs at the theory that any knowledgeable physician would prescribe a medicine ingested through the lungs...
...Instead of answering in kind, she scowled and replied: "We really don't want people in uniform over here . . ." Isn't life odd...
...They also considered him something of a liberal...
...In the mid-1960s, he had decided to go into medicine and was prepared to enter the pre-med program at Johns Hopkins when the Vietnam War escalated...
...I bet maybe 50 percent of the Congress has tried it...
...Three months after taking office, attorney general Janet Reno publicly criticized federal sentencing procedures resulting in long prison terms for "minor participants" in drug deals...
...The "medicalization" of the drug debate is the latest strategy employed by Arnold Trebach, founder of the Drug Policy Foundation, and billionaire George Soros, both of whom have legalization as their ultimate goal...
...The first step was to team up with transportation secretary Federico Pefta and issue a warning that anyone involved in federal transportation would still have to remain drug-free or be fired...
...McCaffrey and Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala are also getting ready to give official warning to any state that considers following the Arizona and California examples that to do so would jeopardize federal funding of drug-treatment and education programs...
...In 1992, only 2 percent said they were using pot daily...
...The day after the election, McCaffrey assembled his staff to formulate a response...
...By law, the drug czar is forbidden to participate in partisan politics, and so McCaffrey remained silent when Dole blistered the Clinton administration for its record on drugs...
...There is no description of what constitutes a sufferer in need of marijuana relief...
...Schedule II drugs are deemed dangerous but have some legitimate medical use, like morphine...
...The two men hit it off, and soon McCaffrey got another promotion, a fourth star, and, ultimately, the drug czar's job...
...When the New York Times interviewed 30 teenagers from Massachusetts and New York about drug use one month before the '96 election, Clinton's name kept coming up...
...Among his many decorations and prizes is an award from the NAACP...
...The move was accomplished 15 hours ahead of schedule, with the loss of only eight American lives...
...Carl M. Cannon covers the White House for the Baltimore Sun...
...Why does Clinton deserve the blame...
...In 1992, 22 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana during the past 12 months...
...After the war, he stayed in the service, rose through the ranks, and was serving as a two-star general in command of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division when it was deployed to the Persian Gulf...
...armed forces and now Clinton's drug czar...
...Smoked marijuana—as a medicine—is sort of a joke," he says...
...Arizona's Prop...
...He's the man on this issue for us," one senior White House official says, "and there's no secret about it...
...215 was tailored to allow any "caregiver"—not just physicians, but anyone who classifies himself as a caregiver—to "recommend" pot to sufferers...
...I mean, adults still use...
...One of the few times Bob Dole actually sank his teeth into Bill Clinton in 1996, after all, was in his evocative assertion that the administration was "AWOL in the war on drugs...
...The second was to bring a series of recommendations to the president, including one urging the DEA to pull the prescription-writing privileges of any physician who starts prescribing pot to his patients...
...And, considering the way things have turned out, wouldn't it be sweet if she were one of the aides now forced to undergo periodic drug testing...
...Barry R. McCaffrey, the most decorated man in the U.S...
...He volunteered for a second tour and was wounded again, this time seriously, shot in the left arm at point-blank range...
...The Clintonites need him...
...now, it's 5 percent...
...With his war record, his button-down demeanor, and his occasional bursts of temper, McCaffrey was seen by his military colleagues as something of a tough guy...
...He was assigned to the staff of Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is how he found himself at the White House the day of the fateful snub...
...And it protects growers who are producing marijuana for such exempted users...
...McCaffrey led his tank division on the fabled 200-mile "left hook" maneuver through the desert, in which the 24th cut off, and then annihilated, the cream of the Iraqi fighting forces...
...One ad even attacked "drug legalizers and liquor lobbyists...
...What the ads didn't say was that Prop...
...All of this sent a rather unmistakable message...
...In 1970, McCaffrey wrote a 30-page paper while teaching at West Point that predicted—and approved of—vastly expanded opportunities for women at the academy and in the rest of the armed forces...
...The son of a general, McCaffrey did not respond the way so many of his generation did: Instead of hiding out in academia, he left school, enlisted, and volunteered for service in Vietnam...
...The same pattern holds for cocaine, heroin, LSD, and other drugs...
...Instead, the ads said Prop...
...He must have tried it more than once," added Isa, a 17-year-old senior from New York...
...200 would actually require violent criminals to serve their full terms without parole...
...The legalization forces are now cleverly invoking the pain and suffering of the terminally ill to demonstrate their view that making the sale and use of drugs a crime causes far more problems than the drugs themselves...
...When the Gulf War ended, McCaffrey was given a third general's star to go along with his two service crosses, two Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts...
...Remember that in 1992, the public's perception of Clinton's view of drugs came chiefly from his brother's troubles as a cocaine user, his own claim that he tried marijuana in college but "didn't inhale," and the notorious MTV interview in which he chuckled and said he would inhale if he tried pot again...
...In California, the ads for Prop...
...Schedule I drugs are those with no recognized medicinal value at all...
...For him to say, 'Don't do drugs,' then to say he did it, but he didn't inhale, that's kind of a far-fetched story," a blonde 16-year-old from Gloucester identified only as Jennifer told the Times...
...This was the mess Barry McCaffrey inherited early last year when Clinton tapped him to head the drug-control office whose personnel and power the president had slashed three years before...
...According to officials who are most active in fighting drugs, it was a fair characterization...
...Even before the announcement was made, top aides predicted that Clinton would sign off on whatever McCaffrey brought him...
...Television advertisements trumpeting the initiative made no mention of these changes, since the makers of those ads clearly understood that voters would balk...
...And last year, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry finally confessed what readers of the Washington Times knew right off the bat in 1993: that several of those Clinton hired as White House staffers confessed to recent or ongoing drug usage during FBI background checks and had to agree to undergo random testing in order to receive security clearances...
...His surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, spoke about the possible benefits of drug legalization, and after her son was busted for cocaine, she said he hadn't really committed a crime...
...After his election, Clinton's top advisers mused in public about moving the drug czar's office out of the White House, and one of his first official acts was to cut the staff of the drug czar's office from 145 full-time employees to 25...
...Clinton's Kind of General by Carl M. Cannon FOUR YEARS AGO, IN THE FIRST FEW weeks of the Clinton presidency, a three-star general attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was at the White House on official business when he said good morning to a young, female Clintonista...
...It was a cynical and dishonest pitch...
...This figure has risen in each year of Clinton's presidency and now stands at 36 percent...
...215 tugged on heartstrings with images of cancer patients allowed access to marijuana in order to increase their appetites after chemotherapy...
...Embarrassed by his handling of military matters in the first months of his administration and seeking to make amends, the president asked McCaffrey to go jogging with him during a Vancouver summit with Boris Yeltsin later that year...
...An incredulous McCaffrey reported the incident back to headquarters, and word of it spread quickly...
...I defy anyone in Arizona to know what they were voting on," McCaffrey told me in a post-election interview...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 18
