Pubdate: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 Source: Evening News (Norwich UK) Contact: CAMPAIGN AGAINST A NEW FACE OF FASCISM In your Opinion column (June 4) "Forget Such a Foolish Tribute" you say it is "crass" to lay wreaths at a war memorial to memorialise the dead and living-dead victims of the drug war. I must disagree. What is crass is to have my parents' generation fight a war against German fascism in the name of freedom, only to have the governments of the western democracies turned into fascist police states - which would make Hitler beam with pride - over the bogeyman of "drugs". What is crass is to arrest 641,000 Americans last year for violation of cannabis prohibition and build America's prison population to over 1.7 million, most of whom are prohibition victims. While the phrase "drug war" started out as a cheap political metaphor, it is no longer so. This is a "real" war with real casualties. But it is not, as it is sometimes represented, a war "on drugs". It is, like all wars, a war against people. It is a war against the people of the US, the people of the UK, and, indeed, a war against all the peoples of the world, by all the governments of the world. Those who languish in the prison camps operated by the perpetrators of this war (not to mention those killed in its atrocious battles) are just as much prisoners of war as any held by the Germans or Japanese fascists 50 years ago. The horror and injustice of their captivity is just as real. The grief of their families is just as real. So it is "entirely appropriate" for those of us with enough sense, decency and compassion to oppose this bloody war to lay wreaths to honour its many victims anywhere where they will be noticed. And it is also entirely appropriate for us to invoke the spirit and goodwill of those who were told they were fighting in an earlier era to defeat fascism and make the world safe for individual freedom. Patrick L. Lilly Normandy Circle, Colorado Springs USA - ---